You Can Have the Trappings!

You Can Have the Trappings!
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. has given us new birth (1 Peter 1:3).
A PROFESSING CHRISTIAN who finds it necessary to keep on apologizing to this present world has missed the whole point of the New Testament revelation of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ!
The Apostle Peter says that "[God] has given us new birth into a living hope." And this constitutes a continuing miracle which should have put the Christian church on the offensive forever!
We have no cause to apologize to the world if we have been born again, changed and transformed through the miracle of supernatural grace and thus endued with the only living and eternal hope which has ever come into this sad and hopeless world!
Why don't we have the courage that belongs to our sound Christian faith? I cannot understand all of this ignoble apologizing and the whipped-dog attitude of so many professing Christians!
I cannot keep from mentioning the kind of confidence and enthusiasm and fascination which the faithful communist holds in his devil-inspired doctrine, and I remind you - communists never apologize!
A real offensive for God
But many Christians spend a lot of time and energy in making excuses, because they have never broken through into a real offensive for God by the unlimited power of the Holy Spirit! The world has nothing that we want - for we are believers in a faith that is as well authenticated as any solid fact of life. The truths we believe and the links in the chain of evidence are clear and rational. I contend that the church has a right to rejoice and that this is no time in the world's history for Christian believers to settle for a defensive holding action!
Brethren, let's not forget that the new birth is a miracle - a major miracle! It is a vital and unique work of God in the human nature. Peter in describing it relates it to the miracle of Jesus Christ rising from the dead, " . . . [God] has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."
So, there is a divine principle here - the fact that a man truly born again is a man who has experienced regenesis, supernatural regenesis. Just as God generated the heavens and the earth in the beginning, He generates again in the breast of the believing man!
Just as surely as God's calling the world out of nothing was a major miracle, the work of God in making a believing Christian out of a sinner is a major miracle as well.
In the light of what God is willing to do and wants to do, consider how we try to "get them in" in modern Christianity.
We get them in any way we can. Then we try to work on them - to adjust them and to reform them.
I may be misunderstood when I say this, but we even have two works of grace because the first was so apologetically meaningless that we try to have two.
I do not speak against the second work of grace; but I am pleading for the work that ought to be done in a man's heart when he first meets God. What I am asking is this: Why should we be forced to invent some second or third or fourth experience somewhere along the line to obtain what we should have received the first time we met God?
I believe in the anointing of the Holy Spirit after regeneration - but I also believe that we ought not to downgrade the new birth in order to find a place for the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
I have read much and studied long the lives and ministries of many of the old saints of God in past generations. I am inclined to believe that many of them were better Christians when they were just newly-regenerated than the run of the so-called "deeper life" people whom I meet today.
We should expect a miracle
I think the difference is in the emphasis of the major miracle which we ought to expect in genuine Christian conversion. Those old-timers would not have believed if a major miracle had not taken place. They would never have been willing to accept a pale and apologetic kind of believing on the Son of God. They insisted on a miracle taking place within the human breast. They knew what Peter meant when he said that the Lord God has begotten us unto a living hope - and they accepted the principle of a miracle wrought in a human being through divine grace.
In reading the Old Testament, we are reminded again and again of the possibility of this miracle of cleansing and transformation.
"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10) - there you have at least the hint of a miracle within the human being. The Old Testament men of God never told us that they had reasoned themselves into a position of faith and power - but that something had happened within their beings that could not be naturally and fully explained!
In Old Testament times, God plainly said:
"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." (Jeremiah 31:33)
Again in Ezekiel, God said:
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. you will be my people, and I will be your God. (36:26–28)
I think you would have to call that a strong hint of regenesis and moral rebirth.
But come along into the New Testament and you will find that it is no longer veiled - the supernatural miracle of the new birth is boldly and openly proclaimed.
The Apostle John writes that our Savior said that if we tried to come to Him and had not been born anew, we could not enter the kingdom of God.
John also plainly reports that " to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will but born of God" (John 1:12–13).
The Apostle Paul told the Corinthian church that "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Can you think of any way to make a statement stronger than that?
Peter describes the miracle in his day as being "born again . . . through the living and enduring word of God" (1 Peter 1:23).
In his epistle, James wrote that "[God] chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created" (1:18).
A miracle of transforming grace
Throughout the New Testament it is made as plain as it can ever be made that God expected to perform a miracle of His transforming grace within the human life of every person willing to come to Him in faith.
If we believe the New Testament we must surely believe that the new birth is a major miracle, as truly a miracle of God as was the first creation, for the new birth is actually the creating of another man in the heart where another man had been.
I believe this is the kind of genuine Christian conversion that we are talking about - the putting of a new man in the old man's place, so that we are born "anew."
This is the point at which I insist that the new birth was provided in the love and grace and wisdom of God in order to draw a sharp line between those who acquire Christianity by any other method and those who have experienced regenesis.
This is a good place for me to comment that some professing Christians are still trying to find natural and reasonable explanations for that which God has said He would do miraculously by His Spirit.
Let me warn you that if you are a Christian believer and you have found a psychologist who can explain to you exactly what happened to you in the matter of your faith, you have been unfrocked! At the very moment that a man's experience in Christ can be broken down and explained by the psychologists, we have just another church member on our hands - and not a believing Christian!
It can't be explained
That is my frank opinion for I am thoroughly convinced that the miraculous element in the genuine Christian experience can never be explained by means of psychological examination. The honest psychologist can only stand off respectfully and say, "Behold the works of the Lord." He never can explain it!
I don't mind telling you that it is my earnest faith that all that is worthwhile in Christianity is a miracle! Actually, I can get along nicely without the outward dressings of Christianity - the trappings and the exterior paraphernalia. I can get along without them because at the heart of our faith are the miracles that throb and beat within the revealed message of God and within the beings of those who truly believe - and that's about all there is to the Christian faith!
As far as I am concerned, I believe that supernatural grace has been the teaching and the experience of the Christian church from Pentecost to the present hour!
Now, to be genuinely born again is the miracle of becoming a partaker of the divine nature. It is more than just a religious expression; more than the hyphenated adjective we often hear, such as "He's a born-again man."
Some evangelicals are slow to admit it, but I know that this important matter of the new birth has fallen into cold hands, along with many other important Bible teachings. I don't have to tell you that in many Christian churches you will feel as though you are in a mortuary instead of the church of the Living God.
Christians who have been miraculously begotten again ought to be rejoicing in their deliverance from the tomb of spiritual death. Instead, we often feel as though we are in the presence of a corpse just brought in from the street. Sad indeed that the words "born again" have become words that seem to mean precious little because the emphasis of supernatural grace has dwindled away, even in some fundamentalist circles.
The new birth is still a miracle of God - it is not a matter of the mind, not just a mental thing. It is my judgment that there are many who talk about being born again on the basis of their mental assent to Christian principles. I think there are many who have received Christ mentally who have never discovered the supernatural quality of the grace of God or of the acts of God.
Must be the most amazing people
God fully expects the church of Jesus Christ to prove itself a miraculous group in the midst of a hostile world. Christians of necessity must be in contact with the world but in being and spirit ought to be separated from the world - and as such, we should be the most amazing people in the world.
However, we have watered down the miracle of divine grace to a point where you actually must find a name on the record books to know whether an individual is a Christian or not.
Brethren, there is a difference! There is also a sad and terrible day of judgment yet to come, a day of revelation and shock for those who have depended upon a mental assent to Christianity instead of the miracle of the new birth!
It is only through the illumination of the new birth that we humans come to a full understanding of the word hope as Peter has used it in his epistles.
I like to think of hope as being one of the great words that Christ gave us even though it was used in the Old Testament and is actually used 140 times in the Bible.
But haven't you noticed in the New Testament that Jesus Christ made no effort to coin new words, novel words? He used words that are well-known, but He invariably charged these words with a new and wonderful meaning. That is why we find ourselves looking back to His expressions and then saying, "Jesus gave us that word!"
In that sense and understanding, we may well say that hope is a word which has taken on a new and deeper meaning for us because the Savior took it into His mouth. Loving Him and obeying Him, we suddenly discover that hope is really the direction taken by the whole Bible. Hope is the music of the whole Bible, the heartbeat, the pulse and the atmosphere of the whole Bible.
Hope means a desirable expectation, a pleasurable anticipation. As men know this word, it often blows up in our faces and often cruelly disappoints us as human beings. Hope that is only human will throw us down and wound us just as pleasurable anticipation often turns to discouragement or sorrow.
Christian hope is alive
But Peter assures us that the Christian hope is alive, that the Christian is begotten again - born again - unto a living hope. This English word for lively or living is the strongest word in the Bible for life, and is the word used of God Himself when it says He is the Living God.
So, in this way, God takes a Christian hope and touches it with Himself and imparts His own meaning of life to the hope of the believers!
There is a great lesson here for any Christian believer who has settled down into the present earthly situation and is becoming satisfied with many good things he can now afford and is able to enjoy.
It is safe to say that the pleasurable anticipation of the better things to come has almost died out in the church of Christ. It is a great temptation to take the shallow view that we do not need any heaven promised for tomorrow because we are so well situated here and now.
This is the emphasis of our day: "We don't need to hope - we have it now!"
But the modern emphasis is wretched and it is wrong. When we do talk about the future we talk about eschatology instead of heaven. When I find any Christian who can live and work and serve here and snuggle down into the world like your hand fits into an old and familiar glove, I worry about him. I must wonder if he has ever truly been born again.
Brethren, we are still living in a wicked and adulterous generation and I must confess that the Christians I meet who really amount to something for the Savior are very much out of key and out of tune with their generation.
You may not agree with me, but I must believe that when God works a miracle within the human breast, heaven becomes the Christian's home immediately, and he is drawn to it as the bird in the springtime is drawn to fly north to its summer homeland.
The trusting Christian has a homeland, too; but the fact that we are not anticipating it and not looking forward to it with any pleasure is a most telling and serious sign that something is wrong with our spiritual life!
I recall a recent poll in which it was reported that 82 percent of the American people expressed a belief in God and the expectation of going to heaven. Personally, I do not like to deal in percentages, but from what I know personally of American men and women I should like boldly and bluntly to say that I will guess that about three-fourths of that 82 percent are indulging an invalid hope.
It is sad, but it must be said that the earthly hope of men and women without God and without Christ and without faith is a vain hope. Certainly there is a great company of people all around us needing the reminder that if they are going to go to heaven they had better begin to live like it now and if they expect to die like a Christian they had better live like a Christian now.
World's hope is vague and in vain
The hope held by the worldling is vague and it is held in vain because of unbelief. It is unbelief that prevents our minds from soaring into the celestial city and walking by faith with God along the golden streets. It is unbelief that keeps us narrowly tied down here, looking eagerly and anxiously to the newspaper ads to find out who is coming to preach because we feel like we need to have our spirit cheered up.
Anyone who needs to be chucked under the chin all the time to keep him happy and satisfied is in bad shape spiritually. He can ignore the fact that the Bible urges us to go on unto perfection for he is of that part of the church that cannot be satisfied without a visit from the latest gospel peddler, who promises cowbells, a musical hand-saw and a lot of other novelties!
Brethren, we have been born of God and our Christian hope is a valid hope! No emptiness, no vanity, no dreams that cannot come true. Your expectation should rise and you should challenge God and begin to dream high dreams of faith and spiritual attainment and expect God to meet them. You cannot out-hope God and you cannot out-expect God. Remember that all of your hopes are finite, but all of God's ability is infinite!
Now, brethren, what is it that makes our Christian hope a living hope and gives it reality and substance for the future?
The answer is clear and plain - the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is God's gracious guarantee of our blessed future.
I dare to say this to you, my friends - your Christian hope is just as good as Jesus Christ. Your anticipation for the future lives or dies with Jesus. If He is who He said He was, you can spread your wings and soar. If He is not, you will fall to the ground like a lump of lead.
Jesus Christ is our hope and God has raised Him from the dead and since Jesus overcame the grave, Christians dare to die.
Centuries ago unbelieving men thought they could stamp out the Christian gospel by parading those transformed, born-again followers of Jesus to the places of their violent torture and executions. Soon the unfeeling executioners began to feel something in the presence of joyful victory over death and they passed along this word: "Behold how these Christians die!"
I contend that they were able to die well because they had lived well and I think that the man who has not lived well will have a tough time getting in.
In our day, that statement will shock some of our "nickel-in-the-slot" theologians - those who insist that salvation is like putting a nickel in the slot of faith. Just pull down the lever and take eternal life which you cannot lose - and walk away!
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is our guarantee and a Christian dares to die if he has lived right and has a hope that is living and has been born of the Spirit and is walking with God!