find this it is
not enough that we go back to the creation-beginning revealed in
Genesis; we must return to the precreation-beginning revealed in John,
the book of re-genesis. In the opening of Genesis we find Adam,
created holy, now fallen through temptation, his face averted from God
and leading the whole human race after him into sin and death. In the
opening of the Gospel of John we find the Son of God in holy fellowship
with the Father. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
toward God", _pros ton theon_--not merely proceeding from God, but
tending toward God by eternal communion. Conversion restores man to
this lost attitude: "Ye turned to God, _pros ton theon_, from idols to
serve the living and true God" (1 Thess. 1: 9). Regeneration restores
man to his forfeited life, the unfallen life of the Son of God, the
life which has never wavered from steadfast fellowship with the Father.
"I give unto them eternal life," says Jesus. Is eternal life without
end? Yes; and just as truly without beginning. It is uncreated being
in distinction from all-created being; it is the I-am life of God in
contrast to the I-become life of all human souls. By spiritual birth
we acquire a divine heredity as truly as by natural birth we acquire a
human heredity.

In the condensed antithesis with which our Lord concludes his demand
for the new birth, we have both the philosophy and the justification of
his {103} doctrine: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto you,
Ye must be born anew" (John 3: 7, R. V.). By no process of evolution,
however prolonged, can the natural man be developed into the spiritual
man; by no process of degeneration can the spiritual man deteriorate
into the natural man. These two are from a totally different stock and
origin; the one is from beneath, the other is from above. There is but
one way through which the relation of sonship can be established, and
that is by begetting. That God has created all men does not constitute
them his sons in the evangelical sense of that word. The sonship on
which the New Testament dwells so constantly is based absolutely and
solely on the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of
universal sonship rests either upon a daring denial or a daring
assumption--the denial of the universal fall of man through sin, or the
assumption of the universal regeneration of man through t