Extract

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 6
God does not cause to germinate some little seed already folded up in man, but He implants an altogether new principle of life. God cannot see in man what we can see in examining a seed through the microscope—the exact form of the future plant all folded up, which when the seed is put into the ground begins to spread forth. When God's eye examines the sinner, what does He see? What did He see in such an one as Saul, the persecutor? Did He see the divine life, afterward manifested in him, all nicely folded and shut up within his soul? No; but the enmity which made Saul persecute to the death the followers of Jesus. He saw moral death, but no life in him. And how was all this changed? By the communication of a new life, an incorruptible seed. (1 Peter 1:2323Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. (1 Peter 1:23).)