trespasses and in sins," except it be given him from above. There must be some living germ implanted by a power not ourselves, and it must be nourished by appropriate conditions. The Spirit of God, brooding over the great deep of man's elementary possibilities, quickens his spiritual nature into heavenly life and light, and releases him from the darkness of sin. Thus, to use the metaphor drawn from the first creation, he is "born of water and Spirit," he is "called out of darkness into marvelous light" (1 Pet. ii, 9); he has put off the old man of sin, with the fleshly lusts and passions of the depraved nature, and has become a new creation by power from on high. There is chaos no longer in his soul, but peace with God through Jesus Christ. He is now dead unto sin, but alive unto God (Rom. vi, 2, 10, 11). The germ of new and heavenly life abides and develops into the eternal life of God. And so we read in 1 John iii, 9: "Whosoever is begotten of God, doeth no sin, because his seed (onéqua avrov; that is, God's seed, an element of the divine nature as a creative germ of new and higher life) abideth in him." This idea of being born or begotten of God, and thereby becoming separate from sin, is peculiarly Johannine (comp. 1 John ii, 29; iv, 7; v, 1, 4, 18). But it is clearly implied in the language of 2 Pet. i, 4: "Ye may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust." It is involved in such Pauline expressions as "newness of life" (Rom. vi, 4); "the Spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. iii, 6); “it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. ii, 20); "your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. iii, 3). In fact the doctrine of divine life begotten in the heart of man by the Spirit of God is so common to all the New Testament writers that it seems needless to point out incidental and favorite forms of expression peculiar to any one author.

7. A Passing out of Death into Life. The new birth, then, is a passing out of darkness into light, and "out of death into life" (John v, 24; 1 John iii, 14). It is a new and heavenly creation by the living "Power from on high," and it is necessary for entrance into the kingdom of God. Heirs of God and partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light must be begotten of God, born from above. In language peculiar to John, "the witness is this, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; and he that hath not the Son hath not the life" (1 John v, 11, 12). While, therefore, all men by reason of their religious constitution and personality are "offspring of God" (yévos Tov dɛov, Acts xvii, 28, 29), no one of these offspring enters into conscious and happy fellowship with God except he be "born from above." There is a new and special

impartation of heavenly life, given upon conditions of contrition and turning unto God in faith. This new birth quickens all the spiritual possibilities within man's nature, and, in the mystic Pauline phrase, his life becomes hidden with Christ in God and he is conceived as a new creation. The simple facts, sufficiently recognized in the Scriptures, of man's religious nature and possibilities, would seem to leave no ground for the controversies which have been raised over the bearing of the doctrine of regeneration on the universal fatherhood of God. The terms employed, such as regeneration, justification, a new creation, passing out of death into life, contain an obvious figurative element, but describe facts of experience. Too many controversialists go far astray over a mere figure of speech, and assume that a new birth and a new creation must needs involve the production of a new being. But no new person is created by this heavenly change. It is the same individual whose conversion is as life from the dead. It is a prodigal son, who forfeited his right to be called a son, and who made himself a child of the devil, selling himself to work ungodliness, that is restored to his father's love, dead but alive again, lost but at length found again, and the witness of his real sonship is of the nature of an adoption, because he had become an alien by his wicked works. So one may say after the manner of Paul in 1 Tim. iv, 10, that God is the Father of all men, especially of them that believe.

CHAPTER V

ADOPTION, SONSHIP, ASSURANCE, AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

1. New Relationship of Adoption. In connection with the doctrine of the new birth and the further development of this new life of God in man, we should also take notice of the New Testament teaching on the subject of the real relationship which such new born children of God sustain to him. This heavenly birth, which is conceived as a new creation, is an introduction to something other and more than natural creaturehood. It is not a relationship which can be propagated from parent to child. It is designated in several Pauline epistles by the word adoption, viodeoía, so that it is conceived as a constituted, not a natural, sonship (a son by déơ5, not by púos). According to Eph. ii, 1-3, all who are "dead through trespasses and sins" were "sons of disobedience," and "we all once lived in the lusts of our flesh,

and were by nature (púσe) children of wrath." Such, though begotten of God by a sort of spiritual resurrection, a "quickening together with Christ" (ver. 5), become beloved children by adoption rather than by generation. Like the prodigal, they are welcomed into the family life, but the reception is not so much a second birth as a new creation, and life from the dead; "the dead is alive; the lost is found" (Luke xv, 32). The new relationship, however, is based upon all that work of repentance and faith and regeneration which we have expounded in the foregoing pages, and in the light of those spiritual experiences we can understand the apostle when he writes: "Ye are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ." "God sent forth his Son

... that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Gal. iii, 26; iv, 5). Similarly in Rom. viii, 14-16: "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God." In Eph. i, 5, it is said that God "foreordained us unto adoption through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will." This sonship which enables one to "cry out, Abba, Father," is not, according to Paul, a relationship which comes by common birth or generation. It is

a new relation to God which the believer receives through Jesus Christ, so that in the good pleasure of the heavenly Father he is placed, set apart, constituted and reckoned as a son (déodai vióv). The idea may have been suggested by the divine adoption of Israel as the chosen nation to be unto Jehovah a peculiar possession (comp. Exod. iv, 22; xix, 5); for in Rom. ix, 4, the apostle speaks of the Israelites as God's favored ones, "whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service, and the promises." In all these passages we note the same conception of a God-given boon, a reception into the relationship of sons, graciously bestowed on those who accept and obey the gospel. The person thus received is thenceforth treated as a child in the family of God, entitled to all the rights, privileges, and blessings of the household. "If children," says Paul, in Rom. viii, 17, "then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ." The relationship is constituted after the manner of adoption; the heirship and all related privileges are as genuine and certain as if the sonship itself were that of an only begotten of a father.' 2. Sons of God. But while the word adoption is peculiar to Paul, and his idea of the relation it implies is somewhat governed by his conception of the relation of the gospel to the law, "sons of God," and "children of God," are terms which appear in other scriptures as describing a true and blessed relationship to God as the heavenly Father. The peacemakers "shall be called sons of God" (Matt. v, 9), and those who love their enemies and pray for their persecutors are praiseworthy sons of their Father who is in heaven (Matt. v, 45). The righteous who "shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father" are the good ones who in this world are called "sons of the kingdom" (Matt. xiii, 38, 43). These same are also called appropriately "sons of light" (Luke xvi, 8; John xii, 36; 1 Thess. v, 5) and "children (Téκva) of light" (Eph. v, 8), and being "imitators of God" they show themselves "beloved children" (Eph. v, 1), "children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation" (Phil. ii, 15). In such texts the filial relation is thought of in connection with the blessedness which it has in itself, and not with reference to the adoption of sons. In one passage (Rom. viii, 23) Paul uses the word adoption with reference to a future and final

1 In contrast with those theologians who study to make fine distinctions between the ideas of divine and human adoption, Ritschl observes that "we ought rather to ascertain the harmony between the two. Such harmony cannot be found in the idea of the establishment of a right of inheritance for a person of alien descent. For those persons who in the Christian sense have been adopted by God as his children attain this rank also only under the presupposition that in a certain real sense they derive their being from God, that is, that they have been created in his image."-Justification and Reconciliation, p. 96. Edinburgh, 1900.

glorification, "the redemption of our body" to which believers look forward in longing expectation, and he says (ver. 19) that "the earnest expectation of the creation is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God." And this accords closely with the beautiful sentiment in 1 John iii, 1-3: "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is. And every one that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." In this conception of the sonship John is not essentially different from Paul, but in substantial agreement. This sonship is not by nature but of grace and love. Its distinguishing mark is the quality of righteousness; for "he that is begotten of God doeth no sin" (vers. 9 and 10). On the contrary, he that doeth sin is a child of the devil, even like Cain, who "was of the evil one, and slew his brother" (ver. 12).

3. Witness of the Spirit. Coincident with this adoption as sons of God there is the removal of the servile spirit of fear. There is no longer a miserable sense of a "law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members" (Rom. vii, 23); “for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death" (viii, 2). This is like an experience of life from the dead, a new creation in Christ, and, according to Paul, the believer receives along with the adoption a twofold assurance of the fact: "The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Rom. viii, 16). God's Spirit and man's spirit bear united testimony to the new and heavenly relationship. The mighty work of God which brings about the release from sin and the newness of life carries along with it its own proper and peculiar assurance to the human self-consciousness. Such a passing from death into life cannot remain hidden from the knowledge of the new man in Christ. The living Spirit makes his own unmistakable impression on the soul, and in quick concurrent response thereto the human spirit witnesses its own sense of the heavenly fellowship. These concurrent testimonies resolve them

Paul distinguishes from the subjective self-consciousness: I am the child of God, the therewith accordant testimony of the objective Holy Spirit: thou art .the child of God. The latter is the yea to the former; and thus it comes that we cry the Abba in the spirit of adoption -Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Handbook, in loco. But the former is also the yea to the latter. In the nature of things, logically speaking, the divine precedes the human witness, and yet the two are simultaneous. See John Wesley's three sermons on "The Witness of the Spirit," in Sermons, vol. i, pp. 85-107. New York, 1854.