QUESTION: Would you say that the wilderness journey dates from the new birth?
ANSWER: New birth, in the Epistle of John goes a very long way. That is the basis of everything with John—the new birth. Typically, it begins with what we know of the new birth rather than "Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed: Thou hast guided them in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation." Ex. 15:13. A proper Christian experience begins with the knowledge of redemption, and that God has brought us to Himself. Do not say, just the new birth, because you do not know when you were born again. You know when you got peace with God.
The blessedness of John in his epistle is the blessedness of being born of Him. But then he not only looks at it in his epistle as the mere implanting of a new life, as in chapter 3 of the Gospel of John, but he looks at it as the way that new life—that new nature—brings us into relationship with God: "born of God.”
We cannot systematize divine things; we would like to make a system and have everything A, B, C, and so on, but we cannot do it. We will either go too far, or stop too soon. It is all linked up as a whole. Divine truths refuse to be bound by a systematic code, and if we remember that, it will help us a good deal.
Then a little farther down He says, "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory." But He sees it is necessary to have this experience in the wilderness. He does not ask that they be taken out of the world, but to keep them from evil.