God is equivalent to saying that if man is to
be redeemed from sin and eternal death, to enter into the kingdom of
God and into happiness, his physical birth will not suffice; all which
nature, reason, free-will and human endeavor may afford is inadequate.
Physical birth, it is true, answers for everything in the way of
temporal possession and achievement, everything great, powerful,
noble, rich, wise, learned; in short, every exalted and desirable
thing of earth. But all such possession and achievement serves only
the physical existence; it is swept away by death, to which event it
is ever subject.

Hence becomes necessary a new and different birth, a birth more
significant than that of the natural man even in the case of emperors,
kings, or the wisest and most influential of earth. For as Isaiah says
(ch. 40, 6): "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as
the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth." The
demand is for a divine birth, a birth in which parentage is wholly of
God; a birth signifying the operation of God's divine power in man, a
power achieving something beyond the attainment of his natural
capacities and effecting in him new understanding and a new heart.

5. The process is this: When the individual hears the Gospel message
of Christ--a message revealed and proclaimed not by the wisdom and
will of man, but through the Holy Spirit--and sincerely believes it,
he is justly recognized as conceived and born of God. John in his
gospel (ch. 1, 12) says: "As many as received him, to them gave he the
right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his
name." And in the first verse of the chapter including our text, he
tells us: "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of
God." Through that faith, for the sake of his Son, God accepts us as
his children, pleasing to him and heirs of eternal life; and the Holy
Spirit will be sent into our hearts, as is explained later.

6. This doctrine condemns those arrogant teachers who presumptuously
expect to be justified before God by their own merits and works. They
imagine that their wisdom, learning, good judgment, intelligence, fair
reputation and morality entitle them, because of the good they are
thus enabled to do, to the favor of God and to reception up into
heaven. But the Scriptures clearly teach the very reverse, that all
these things are nothing in the eyes of God. It is sheer human effort;
it is