18. XVI. The New Birth

XVI. The New Birth

Paul stands out in his letters and in history as a man filled with an intense, flaming, consuming passion for “righteousness”. To attain this “righteousness” is the true end of man. Righteousness is the nature and character of God; and to be made one with God, to be in fellowship or communion with God, must necessarily be the true goal of human life. Since God is, the single and perfect existence, the truth and reality of the world, man who, by his existence as man, is separated from God, sees before him the one straight path whose goal is God; and to that goal he must either move onwards, or degenerate and “die”.

Accordingly these and many other various expressions describing the end and purpose of man are practically equivalent: they are rough attempts to express in imperfect human terms, through imperfect imagery and figurative expression, the same thing. To attain unto righteousness, to be in communion with God, to gain everlasting life, is the true career of man; and this is Salvation. The pagans around were, as has been already said, praying for Salvation, seeking it by vows and dedications. That is the striking fact of the Graeco-Roman world. Paul preached to those who already were ignorantly seeking what he offered; or to put the matter from a different point of view, he caught up the term Salvation (Σωτηρία) from them, put his own meaning (i.e. Jesus’s meaning) into it, and then gave it back to them. They offered to purchase Salvation by vows, or tried to extort it by prayers and entreaties from the gods; but what they meant by it was largely material and ephemeral good; in the dedications and vows the word sometimes appears to mean little more than health, or prosperity or good fortune, or a union of all three. Yet the word never wholly excludes a meaning that comes nearer to reality and permanence: there lies latent in it some undefined and hardly conscious thought of the spiritual and the moral, which made it suit Paul’s purpose admirably. The pagans could rarely have expressed in definite words this vague “something more,” which they begged from the gods; and yet probably almost all the dedicants whose records we decipher had a certain dim consciousness of this indefinable good thing which they desired over and above mere safety and health and worldly prosperity. As Professor H. A. A. Kennedy (St. Paul’s Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 6 f.) says excellently: “All these statements [specimens of which have just been given] are certainly justifiable, as expressing each a side of the truth in which the mind of Paul can rest with perfect satisfaction. They are all, moreover, consistent with one another, for they are all closely linked with his personal Christian experience.” These last few words are especially excellent; it is in the final resort always Paul’s own life that determines his knowledge, and so it must be with every Christian. You know nothing really until you have lived it, worked it into your nature and life, and made it a part of yourself. All the various expressions of this thought which are found in Paul’s writings arise out of his own experience; they are not arrived at by abstract philosophic thought, but forged on the anvil of life and work. As the aim of life Paul looked for permanence. The Divine nature always is: there is for God only the present tense, “I am”. The certainty, the permanence, the reality of God are contrasted with the variability, the transitoriness, the uncertainty of all else. As Professor Kennedy translates the words of Steffen, Paul “sighed, as scarcely any other has done, beneath the curse of the transiency of all that is earthly”. (St. Paul’s Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 6: Steffen in Zft. f. N.T. Wissenschaft, 1901, ii. p. 124, to which I have not access at present.) He longed for the assurance which lies in union with God.

Here Semitic thought closely approximates to Hellenic philosophical expression. It is one of the central ideas in Greek philosophy that the whole universe and every object in it exist through constant motion and change. Nothing remains the same. Some things change more quickly, some more slowly; but all things are involved in this ceaseless movement. You cannot step twice into the same river, for its water flows by, and new water takes its place. You cannot twice climb the same hill, for it is disintegrating and wearing away by a never-ceasing though slow process of change. There is nothing fixed, nothing trustworthy, and therefore nothing real in these things. Existence which is merely a constant process of change is not in a real sense existence.

Thus Paul’s thought comes back always to the first principle that God is, while nothing else is. All other things seem to be, but they only mock the mind with the illusion of being. The philosophic mind is compelled by its own nature to get back behind them to the permanent and the real. It can acquiesce in God, and in nothing else, for there is nothing but illusion except in Him; and only the superficial and unphilosophic mind can be content with outward appearance without underlying reality. Of all these expressions for the one truth, however, probably the most suggestive and the one which best seizes the reality is that you must be born again, you must enter on a new life; “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature”; (2 Corinthians 5:17.) “it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me”. (Galatians 2:20.) Already, in this life on earth, the new life has begun, and one’s old self has died. The Divine life has begun; the goal is attained; the man is merged in God and united with God, because his former self has died, and “Christ liveth in me” (as every true Christian can say in so far as he is a true Christian). There is nothing in Paul’s words and experience that arrogates anything peculiar to himself, or anything that differentiates him for “all the saints”. There is but one experience, and one true life free and open to all. This new life begins through the death of the old nature: the death takes place through suffering, and (as Paul figuratively puts it) you must crucify the old self, for “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the passions thereof”. (Galatians 5:24.) This is the law of the universe: the birth of the new is the death of the old: through death we enter on life: in science it is expressed as the transformation of force.

These are figurative expressions, some of which are used by Paul and others by John. They denote the same idea, from practically the same point of view. Nicodemus wholly failed to understand what it meant to be born again; and it is not recorded that the further explanation in John 3 conveyed a clearer meaning to him at the time. The thought was so totally new to him that at first it seemed to him meaningless and impossible. What does it mean to us? How shall we express it in modern everyday language, seeking for other figures and other forms which come more into harmony with the cast of current thought? May we not say that in this series of figures taken from birth and new life, we have the same idea that we call development or rather evolution? In this connexion we must again quote and scrutinise more minutely that most typical and illuminating passage in Paul’s letters, Php 3:10 ff.

Having . . . the righteousness which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith: that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death: if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have laid hold: but one thing I do . . . I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded. . . . Brethren, be ye imitators together of me.

Two apparently contradictory assertions are here brought together, and Paul passes from the one to the other, and back again. On the one hand he has gained the righteousness of God; he is made perfect: he is worthy of imitation; that he should be so, was the purpose of God, which worked itself out in its own way through the developing events of his life. Paul is the Christian; and what he says every true Christian, every ἅγιος, every saint, can equally say. His experiences are the experiences of all the saints. “Christ . . . was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” (1 Corinthians 1:30. “Gentiles . . . have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith” (Romans 9:30).) The man who calls on others to imitate him is claiming to be the model for them: men are made in the image of God, and only one who has the righteousness of God can be a model to other men: yet every saint can claim to be so. On the other hand, in the same passage, Paul is also saying that he is not perfect: he has not yet attained righteousness: (The word “yet” is omitted by many good authorities (including B and all Latin); it is needed for the thought, but is naturally supplied from the preceding sentence; and the emphasis and variety are heightened if it is left to the reader to supply. The temptation was to insert it from the influence of the preceding.) life is the goal towards which he is struggling, and the prize which he is striving to win. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life.” But the crown lies in front: there is still a way to traverse, hard and trying, before the prize is won. Death must be faced and traversed as the gate of life.

Thus almost in the same breath Paul is saying “I have attained” and “I have not yet attained”. How shall we reconcile the two apparently contradictory expressions? There is no real contradiction: the two unite in one complete idea, and the idea is growth.