The Old Nature and the New Birth: Or, The New Convert and His Difficulties
George Cutting
Table of Contents
The Old Nature and the New Birth: the New Convert and His Difficulties
Those who have much to do with the difficulties and exercises of the newly converted are constantly hearing some such expression as this: “I thought I was saved once, but I now begin to fear that after all I’ve only been deceiving myself. Not only do I feel no better in myself, but, if any thing, even worse than before I professed to be converted.”
Now, in such cases, one generally finds that it is not so much their sins that trouble them, as the heart-sickening disappointment they feel, as more and more the truth is forced upon them that their new birth has not only effected no improvement in their evil nature, but that that nature seems much worse than before their conversion. Then comes many a fruitless effort to improve it; but, alas! only to end in deeper wretchedness than ever. In such a state of soul, Satan finds but too fitting an opportunity of hurling his terrible darts. He suggests that they are only miserable hypocrites, professing to be what they know they are not! — that they had far better give up the whole thing, come out in their true colors, and own that they have never been converted at all!
Oh what intense soul-agony do such assaults cause, when, as yet, true liberty is unknown! Only those who have really passed through it can have any conception of its untold bitterness. It is with a desire to encourage and help such that this little book is sent forth.
God’s Facts and Our Feelings
When in His Word God states a plain fact, it is our wisdom to bow to it and believe it, even though our understanding may not at the time be able to grasp it, nor our experience exactly coincide with it. “God is His own interpreter,” and, to the soul that patiently waits upon Him, He will, in His own time, most surely “make it plain.” But should He never in this world be pleased to do so, it is for us to believe it all the same, because of its unerring Author.
Before entering upon the main subject before us, let me give you an example of what I mean, which I trust may be divinely blest to any reader who is in any measure of uncertainty as to the present possession of eternal life.
If you take your Bible, and turn to the third chapter of John’s gospel, you will find, in the last two verses, that God has there recorded four present, solid facts. Let us place them in order thus: —
(1) “The Father loveth the Son.”
(2) “And hath given all things into His hand.”
(3) “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.”
(4) “He that believeth not the Son . . . the wrath of God abideth on him.”
Now, I repeat, these are four facts, — i.e., they are no mere human opinions, based upon any experience in us: they are unalterable facts. How any fact, when believed, may affect you, is another thing; that is a matter of your feeling, or experience. For instance, the news of the victorious entrance of the German forces into Paris a few years since produced, no doubt, a vast variety of experiences as it reached the ears of different persons in different lands; but the fact remained unalterably the same. The experience was produced by the fact believed: the fact was not dependent upon the experience.
Take another illustration. A certain young man is to enter upon large possessions and high privileges when he comes of age. One morning his father addresses him thus: “Let me congratulate you, my son! You are of age today.”
“Pardon me, father,” he replies, “but I think you are mistaken.”
“How so?” inquires the astonished father.
“Why, for three reasons. In the first place, I don’t feel that I am twenty-one. Secondly, I was only this very morning looking at myself in the glass, and I’m sure I didn’t look like twenty-one. Lastly, I know it to be the firm opinion of many of my very intimate companions that I can’t possibly be more than about eighteen, or nineteen at most. How can I, therefore, be of age? My friends don’t think I am; and as for myself, I neither feel like it nor look like it!”
Now what, think you, would a wise father do in such a case? He would simply turn to the family register; and if the plain record there didn’t assure his foolish son, nothing could.
“But,” you exclaim, “who would be so absurd as to talk like that?” I reply, Beware lest you are found manifesting like folly, or worse; for no one can deny that there are multitudes of professed believers in Christ today who pursue precisely the same line of argument, and that in regard of the plainest facts of God’s Word. Now, if the father’s written testimony in the family register is enough to assure the son of his real age, and that altogether apart from his feelings, surely the written Word of God “that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” ought to be sufficient to give us full assurance of our eternal blessing. Notice, in this verse (Matt. 4:4), how Christ connects “It is written” with the “mouth of God.” This is how faith ever reckons.
And now, for the sake of any troubled reader, let us look at the four facts before referred to in John 3.
(1) “The Father loveth the Son.”
Now, do you believe that fact?
“Oh, yes!” you say, “I do.”
But do you feel, then, that the Father loves the Son?
“It isn’t what I feel,” you reply. “I feel sure He does, for the simple reason that God’s Word says He does. It is not a question of what I think or feel. It is a fact; and as such, I believe it.”
(2) “And hath given all things into His hand.”
“Well,” you say, “and I firmly believe that fact also.”
But is it because you feel it, or because you SEE every thing put into His hand?
“Neither,” you reply; “but I am fully assured of it. God has declared it.”
Now, then, pass on to the last fact.
(4) “He that believeth not the Son . . . the wrath of God abideth on him.”
Again I inquire, Do you believe that fact also, namely, that the wrath of God abides upon the unbeliever? And again perhaps you answer in the affirmative. But supposing the unbeliever doesn’t feel it! “Ah,” you respond, “but the wrath abides upon him all the same for that. His feeling it would not make it true, neither would his not feeling it make it untrue. There stands the fact recorded, and ‘the word of our God shall stand forever’ (Isa. 40:8). But,” you say, “I am not an unbeliever — I really do believe on the Son of God.” Well, then, just notice the fact which before I purposely omitted, viz., —
(3) “He that believeth on the Son HATH everlasting life.”
Now, in a preceding verse in this chapter, we read, “He that hath received His testimony hath set to his seal that God is true” (vs. 33). And remember that God has not only given a distinct testimony concerning His beloved Son, but has again and again stated the plainest facts concerning those who really believe on Him.
“If I could only believe I was saved, I should be saved,” said an anxious soul one day; “but I have not faith enough for that yet.” Now, plausible as this may look at first sight, it is not the gospel. God doesn’t say, “If you can only have faith enough to believe that you have eternal life, you shall have it.” That would be to make a saviour of your faith, and to shut Christ out. But, believing on His Son, He states a simple fact about you, namely, that you HAVE everlasting life, and leaves you simply to set to your seal that “God is true.” If the unbeliever has the wrath of God abiding on him whether he feels it or not, so has the true believer everlasting life whether he thinks he has the feeling that rightly belongs to it or not.
Two Impossibilities
But some perplexed believer may say, “This is not my difficulty at all. I cannot for a moment doubt the truth of the believer’s present possession of eternal life; but when I compare my daily experience with other plain truths in God’s Word, I begin to fear that I am not born again at all. For example, in the first epistle of John there are three absolute facts stated about the one who is ‘born of God,’ and I can’t answer to even one of them, do what I will.
“1St. He does not and cannot sin. (1 John 3:9.)
“2nd. He overcometh the world (ch. 5:4).
“3rd. The wicked one toucheth him not (ch. 5:18).
“Now, in the face of such a scripture, I am bound to confess —
“1St. That I can and (alas!) do sin.
“2nd. That instead of my overcoming the world, it constantly overcomes me.
“3rd. That the enemy has defeated me times without number; thus he does touch me.
“Is there any wonder,” you say, “in the perplexity or even the alarm that I often feel in contemplating such a scripture, in the face of such an experience as mine?”
Well, I confess there is not; but let me say, for your comfort, that those who are “dead in their sins” never experience such conflict. It is only the converted who really desire to answer to the thoughts and wishes of god. The unconverted “desire not the knowledge of His ways.” They have “no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. 3:18).
But let us return.
We have been noticing one impossibility, viz., “Whosoever is born of God cannot sin”; let us also look at another (Rom. 8:78), “The carnal mind [literally, ‘mind of the flesh’] is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” Mark well these important contrasts: —
“In the flesh” — as “born of the flesh” and “cannot please God.”
“Born of God” — and “cannot sin.”
It may be well here to say that God speaks of the “flesh” in two ways in Scripture, —
1. It is used for the physical body, e.g., “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). And Paul, writing to the Colossians, says (ch. 2:1), “As many as have not seen my face in the flesh.”
2. It is the evil or fallen nature in every child of Adam, poisoned by indwelling sin, which is the real source of every sinful action performed by him, e.g., “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit,” etc. (Gal. 5:17).
Two Distinct Natures in One Person
Thus we have seen that at our natural birth we get an evil nature, so evil, that God says it is impossible to make it subject to His holy law. It “cannot please God.” “Behold,” says the Psalmist, “I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psa. 51:5).
But at our spiritual or second birth we receive, through the sovereign operation of the Spirit by means of the Word of God (James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:23), another nature entirely — a “divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) — a new life. The blessed Lord put it to Nicodemus in a few words thus: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).
So that the believer actually possess two natures, viz., “that which is born of the flesh,” and which, because of its very nature, “cannot please God,” and “that which is born of the Spirit,” which from its essential nature “cannot sin, because it is born of God.” In the seventh chapter of Romans, you will find these two natures distinctly mentioned side by side. See, for example, the last verse.
“So then with the mind [i.e. the renewed mind, or, as we have been expressing it, the new nature] I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh [i.e., the old nature,] the law of sin.” Then again, vss. 22-23, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,” etc.
A simple illustration here may be helpful.
A farmer’s wife, having placed a hen upon a sitting of duck’s eggs, found, at the end of a week, that the greater part of them had been destroyed by some enemy of the hen roost, upon which she made up the sitting with hen’s eggs. When the hatching day came round, the hen, of course, found herself responsible for two distinct broods of little ones. This, however, caused her little or no trouble, till one day, she discovered to her sore distress, that the little ducklings had taken themselves off to a pond close by, and so delighted were they with their first excursion on the water, that her loudest clucks and most urgent calls alike proved fruitless to bring them back to dry land. The chickens, on the contrary, showed not the slightest inclination to venture into such an element, and would have been miserable enough had they been forced into it. So that here were two distinct natures, with entirely different tastes and habits. That which came from the duck’s egg had the nature of the duck, that from the hen’s egg the nature of the hen; yet both were hatched in the same nest. Now all the farmers’ wives in the world, with all the men of science at their back, could never change the nature of a duck into that of a chicken. The duck would still keep the nature of a duck, and the chicken the nature of a chicken.
A thousand times more distinct are the two natures in a Christian, because of the different sources from whence they come. One is from man — lost, guilty, fallen man; the other from God, in all the holiness of His sinless nature. One is human, and polluted; the other divine, and therefore undefilable. So that every evil thought or deed of the believer springs from the old nature, while every good desire, or godly deed, finds its source in the new. For example, you may remember the day when you had a desire to retire to your quiet room alone for prayer. That desire came from the new nature. But while upon your knees, perhaps some wicked, wandering thought came into your mind. That was the outcome of the old. But now comes another important inquiry, viz., —
Is the Old Nature Improved by the New?
There is but one answer: Nothing can improve the flesh. It was tried in every possible way from the fall of Adam in Eden to the cross of Christ at Calvary. And what was the result? Why, just this: God’s holy law was willfully broken, when He came righteously demanding obedience from man. His Son was cruelly murdered, when He visited this world in grace to man. Indeed, instead of the presence of a divine life improving the old nature, it only manifests its utter badness. Just as making a poor beggar the present of a new coat by no means improves the appearance of his old threadbare dirty waistcoat, but the very opposite.
Then, it may be asked, if my old nature can neither be forgiven nor improved, two difficulties at once present themselves.
(1) How can I be delivered from it?
(2) How do I get power over it?
In considering these difficulties it will be well to notice the important difference made in Scripture between —
“SIN” in the flesh and “SINS.”
Very frequently the evil principle born in us naturally is simply called SIN, while the evil actions, words, and thoughts which are the consequence of possessing this corrupt nature are called SINS. You will see the distinction in 1 John 1:89, — “If we say that we have no SIN, we deceive ourselves,” etc. And again, “If we confess our SINS, He is faithful and just to forgive us our SINS.” This distinction is of the greater importance when we find in Scripture that while, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, God does forgive our sinful deeds — i.e., our SINS; yet He never forgives “SIN in the flesh,” but “condemns,” or judges it. Let me seek to explain how this is.
Suppose you have a child who has naturally a violent temper. In a fit of passion one day, he throws a book at his brother, and breaks a large pane of glass in the window. Well, upon penitent confession of the naughty deed, you would be free to forgive him; but what about the bad temper that made him do it? Do you forgive that? Impossible! You detest it, and if you could, would get thoroughly rid of it — you utterly condemn it!
Now, the bad temper [though in itself only one feature of an evil nature,] would answer more to indwelling SIN; while its evil activities in hurting the brother and of smashing the window would answer more to the SINS. And so, I repeat, though God does most freely forgive the believer’s sins, He never forgives SIN. Condemnation is the only thing He can righteously apply to it — death is the only way out of it. See Rom. 8:3, — “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin [i.e., a sacrifice for sin], CONDEMNED SIN IN THE FLESH.”
In the earlier chapters of the epistle to the Romans, the apostle is occupied in showing our deliverance from SINS; but in the sixth chapter, he shows how we are delivered from SIN. For example, in the last verse of the fourth chapter, he speaks of Christ as having been “delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification.” And the blessed consequence of His having been thus delivered is, that those who believe on Him are righteously forgiven — are “justified” — have “peace with God.” But, as it has just been said, in ch. 6 he is treating of deliverance from sin, another matter entirely. “He that IS DEAD,” he says, “is freed [or justified] from sin” (vs. 7, margin).
Now I think you will, in figure, get a glimpse of the difference between these two things by comparing the cleansing of the leper in Lev. 14:17 with that of Naaman in 2 Kings 5:10-14.
In the first scripture, I ask you to notice that the poor leper, totally unfit to do any thing for his own cleansing, has simply to stand by and see all done for him. The bird “alive and clean” is dipped into the blood of the slain bird, ad then let loose into the open field; — that is, the poor leper beholds a “living,” “clean” one going down into death for him an “unclean” one. The blood-stained substitute then soars on high, and the lips of the priest pronounce the leper clean.
Thus hath “Christ once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). And therefore not a spot can be found upon us, nor a charge brought against us, who believe on Him. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7); and “BY HIM all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:38-39).
But in the case of Naaman, we don’t see another going down into death for him. He must himself go there (looking at Jordan as a figure of death). The happy result need not occupy us now. Suffice it to say that, speaking figuratively, all that he had been as a leper was gone in death.
And thus Scripture teaches that not only did Christ go down into death for the believer, but that, like Naaman, he himself has been into death. He has died with Christ (Rom. 6:8).
There is, however, one great difference between our deliverance and Naaman’s. He was delivered from the presence of the plague; we shall never be thus delivered (i.e., from the actual presence of “indwelling sin”) until we leave this world, either at death or when the Lord comes.
Thus all that we are by nature, as well as all that we have done, has already been dealt with on the cross; and He who bore our condemnation there said, “IT IS FINISHED.” Who, then, shall condemn us? Nay, there is nothing left to condemn. Does Satan bring our sins before us? We neither deny nor excuse them, but simply answer, “Christ died for them.” Is it the sinfulness of our nature that he would harass us with? We can but add, “In Christ’s death I too have died” (Col. 3:3).
But now comes a practical difficulty with many. I once heard a believer pray most earnestly that he might feel that he was dead with Christ. But does God ever speak about our feeling dead? Never. He tells us to “reckon ourselves to be dead” — “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:11). We are to believe that we died with Christ, simply because God says so, and not because we feel dead, or ever will. God tells us that in His sight it is so, and expects us as simply to believe it as we do that Christ died for our sins. God reckons our Substitute’s death as our death, and the reckonings of faith always agree with His.
Thus our old standing as children of fallen Adam came to an end before God at the cross, or, as Scripture puts it, “Our old man has been crucified with Christ” (Rom. 6:6), and we are now connected in life with the last Adam — the risen Christ, or, as it is expressed in Romans 7:4 — “Married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead.”
As believers, we have been brought into a new position altogether. He who took our condemnation, being made sin for us upon the cross, is now risen out of death, and God sees us in “IN HIM.” We are made “the righteousness of God in Christ,” and are therefore forever beyond the reach of condemnation.
“Death and judgment are behind us,
Grace and glory are before;
All the billows rolled o’er Jesus,
There they spent their utmost power.
“ ‘Firstfruits’ of the resurrection,
He is risen from the tomb;
Now we stand in new creation,
‘Free,’ because beyond our doom.“
“But how is it,” inquires some one, “that the very presence of such an evil thing as the flesh in a believer is not a hindrance to his communion with God?” Let me seek to explain this by using another illustration.
A father and son sit at home one day in happy communion with each other, — that is, they share together the same thoughts and feelings about every matter that comes before them. Presently, however, another child comes in from taking a ramble in the woods, and lays upon the table some wild berries. The father at once condemns them as poisonous, and totally unfit for food, and desires that they should be immediately thrown away. Now, if the son share his father’s thought about them, and condemn them too, you can see at once that the mere presence of the bad fruit has not occasioned the slightest breach of communion between them. But if, on the other hand, the son, deceived by the enticing appearance of the berries, refuse to accept his father’s judgment, and seek to retain them, he is now out of communion; and, if he venture to taste them, will be sure to suffer in consequence. When, however, in humble confession of his self-will, he is brought to see his folly, and to take sides with his father in condemning the fruit, communion is again restored.
When the believer who has learned from God these blessed truths discovers (as he surely will,) that sin still “dwelleth in him,” and that the old nature is as bad as ever, he can, instead of fruitlessly attempting to make it better, take sides with God against it. He never regards it as any thing but the deadliest enemy, ever to be distrusted, and never to be indulged. He knows that God has utterly condemned it at the cross, and therefore he condemns it too. He reckons himself as dead to it, but “alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Oh, what a comfort it is that God is not expecting any good thing from the flesh; but that He has given it up forever as a totally worthless thing! Neither has it any rightful claim upon us. We are no longer debtors to the flesh to live after the flesh (Rom. 8:12). And though still responsible to exercise the greatest watchfulness in not allowing it to act, yet God gives us, through the death and resurrection of Christ, to regard it as no longer having any place in our new standing before Him. The cross of Christ forever snapped the link that we once had with the first Adam, fallen; and the Holy Ghost has brought into our souls the life of the last Adam, risen. We are not “in the flesh” at all, according to God’s reckoning, but in the Spirit; and the only life that we now have before Him is the life of Christ. So that the apostle could say, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). But let us now consider the next question, viz., —
What Is the Secret of Our Power?
If you will call to mind what we were saying about the hen and her brood of ducklings, I think you will see, in her distress, a picture of the state of numbers of precious souls today. Now, what is really the cause of her sore trouble? Why, just this; that she cannot make the ducklings to be what she knows by natural instinct a brood of chickens ought to be; and the older they get, the more self-willed they seem to be, and determined to get into the water whenever they can get the least opportunity. Sometimes, it is true, they are all at rest together under her wing, and then perhaps she thinks she is at last gaining the victory, and making them better; but, alas! again and again she is doomed to disappointment, for they only get worse and worse. The farmer’s wife, however, hearing her cry of distress one day, sends her little girl to keep the ducklings out of the pond; for she plainly sees that the hen’s trouble about this part of the brood is seriously interfering with her care for the little chickens.
Oh, what a comfort this new helper is to the hen! For though she found no way to improve the manners of the tiresome truants, she has now, at all events, got a power to control them.
Now, every one that is born of the Spirit of God possesses instincts peculiar to the new nature that has been imparted to him — instincts which delight in the law of God, and submit to be guided by the Word of God. But he finds also that he has got to do with instincts and desires of an entirely opposite character, namely, those peculiar to the old nature. Thus there are “the things of the flesh” and “the things of the Spirit.” The tastes and desires of both stand in the most direct contrast.
But what troubles the new convert is, that he cannot make the flesh to be what the Word of God teaches him a newborn soul ought to be; and the law, though he delights in it after the inward man, gives him no POWER. In other words, he is trying to accomplish what God has declared to be an utter impossibility, namely, making the flesh subject to His holy law (see Rom. 8:7-8). He finds that the flesh will mind the things of the flesh, and is very enmity itself to the law of God, and even to God Himself. And since this is so, the greater his earnestness to accomplish this impossibility, the more intense his misery. Indeed, to apply law to the flesh, in seeking to make it subject, is only to manifest still more its desperate willfulness. If you pour water upon unslacked lime, instead of cooling it, you will only bring out the fire that lies hidden within. Thus it is with the flesh. The law applied to it only brings out its “enmity,” though the enmity was there before. “By the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). Though the newborn soul has a nature that “would do good,” yet he finds, alas! that “evil is present with him,” and it is not until he gives up his struggle as utterly hopeless, and looks outside himself, crying, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” that deliverance really comes; and then he thanks God through Jesus Christ.
Thus he has learned, what every one must learn before deliverance can be realized in an experimental way, first, that the “flesh” is an utterly worthless thing — that there is neither good in it nor remedy for it (Rom. 7:18; 8:7); second, that even in the new nature, with all its right desires, there is no real power either for good or against evil.
But the Spirit of God does more than merely quicken a dead sinner into life. He afterward becomes the power of that life. When the newborn soul believes the “gospel of his salvation,” the Holy Ghost, as a distinct Person, comes into him as an abiding dweller there (Eph. 1:13). He is “sealed” unto the “day of redemption” (i.e., the redemption of the body, Eph. 4:30). (See also Rom. 8:9,14,16, and the Lord’s own words, John 14:17.) According to 1 Cor. 6:19, his body becomes “the temple of the Holy Ghost” which is in him. He is no longer his own, but “bought with a price.”
A few months since, I saw the following announcement fixed outside a large house (it looked like some hotel): “This house will be reopened [at such a date] under entirely new management.” I presume that it had changed hands, and that there was therefore new proprietorship too. Now this announcement brought the scripture just quoted at once to my mind (1 Cor. 6:19-20). The house was the same; its windows, doors, chimneys, outhouses, — all the same; but there was a new proprietor, and in consequence, “entirely new management.”
So it is with the believer. He is the same individual, with the same faculties as before his conversion; is in the same business perhaps, with precisely similar social circumstances surrounding him; but he is now the personal property of Another. He is “Christ’s,” and as such, is now put under entirely “new management,” — i.e., the Holy Ghost enters his body, takes up His residence there, henceforward to “manage the house” upon heavenly principles. How solemn! Yet how intensely blessed!
How, herein is the believer’s power for every activity that is according to God. Here is his power to control the flesh, “to mortify the deeds of the body” (see Rom. 8:13). Just as the little girl resisted the natural will of the ducklings, so that by her means the hen is able to keep them under due control, so we are told in Gal. 5:17 that “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other: in order that ye should not do the things that ye would.” What we need to be careful about is, not to “grieve” the One who has thus come to “manage” us, even “the Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30).
But, it may be asked, if the evil nature still remains in every converted person, and that evil nature is ever ready to assert itself, how can it be possible that —
“Whosoever Is Born of God Cannot Sin”
Well, carefully mark, in the first place, that it is not some peculiar, advanced attainment of just a few who may be said to have “faith for it,” as it is sometimes called. It takes in the whole of the newborn race — “WHOSOEVER is born of God.”
“But,” remarks another, “this statement seems to be a thorough contradiction to all that I either experience in myself or see in others!”
Well, it may seem so, but let us look at it a little more closely and prayerfully, bearing in mind that the first step toward understanding the Word of God is to believe it. “By faith we understand” (Heb. 11:3). And here I would give you an illustration much used by a Spirit-taught servant of God, now at rest in the presence of his Lord, namely, the well-known practice of grafting an apple tree upon a crab tree stock. As you are aware, no doubt, the head of the crab tree is first cut off; then a small portion of an apple tree is carefully inserted, or “grafted in,” as it is called; then it is securely guarded by a covering of clay round the joint, and left to grow and develop in the coming spring and summer.
Now let us, in thought, go to the orchard where the tree in question is planted, and inquire more about it of the gardener.
“What kind of a tree do you call this?” we ask.
“An apple tree,” he replies.
“But why don’t you say that it is partly a crab tree and partly an apple tree?”
“Because we gardeners never think of talking like that. It was once a crab tree in the wood, now it is an apple tree in the orchard. It is really the same individual tree; but when we cut off its head, its history as a crab tree came to an end; and when the new graft first showed signs of life, its new history as an apple tree from that day commenced.”
“But doesn’t this apple tree still bear crabs?”
“No! and what is more, it cannot. It is just as impossible for the apple tree to bear crabs as it was impossible for the crab tree to bring forth apples.”
“But do you mean to say, then, that there is nothing whatever of the ‘crab’ nature about this tree?”
“No. But I do say that there is nothing of the ‘crab’ that has not been condemned as such; and if it should show signs of life by sending up shoots from the old stock, I at once take the knife and never think of sparing even the smallest sprout.”
Let us now apply this figure. The wild crab tree represents a man in his natural state, before he is born of God. At his second birth, a new life, like the apple tree graft, is produced in him by the Spirit and the Word.
Now the apostle John, in his epistles, generally speaks of things in a very abstract way. Just as the gardener, who insisted that the tree was only an “apple tree,” so John, in the passage referred to, looks at the believer only in connection with the new nature — the divine life he possesses as born of God. And therefore just as it is impossible for an apple tree (looked at simply as such) to bear crabs, and that because it is an apple tree, so it is equally impossible for the one who is born of God (looked at simply as such) to commit sin. “His seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” How could a divine nature sin?
Now this divine nature was really the nature that Christ manifested in His blessed pathway through this world. Thus He didn’t sin. How could He? He overcame the world. The wicked one couldn’t touch Him. (“The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me” [John 14:30].) And, as we have already seen, these are the very things that are said to be true of those who are born of God. So that the apostle can say, “Which thing is true in Him [i.e., in Christ] and in you” (1 John 2:8). How wondrous it is! Well may we exclaim with holy adoration, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.”
But while John speaks of the divine nature in this absolute, abstract way, he does not, on the other hand, ignore the existence of the sinful nature in the believer. So in vs. 8, ch. 1 of the first epistle, he says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Then in ch. 2:1, we are exhorted not to sin, and the provision pointed out if we do fall into sin, namely, “an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,” who restores us again to communion with the Father, by bringing us, as His erring children, to see our folly and confess our sins. We have, moreover, the comforting assurance in vs. 9 that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” But why “faithful and just”? Because “Jesus Christ the righteous” made full satisfaction for our sins, once and forever, by His precious blood upon the cross.
Now, in Paul’s writings we have brought before us the Spirit’s teaching as to the believer’s entire deliverance from his old standing in Adam, and his place of complete justification and perfect acceptance in Christ. He shows us that though there are actually two distinct natures in the believer, yet that God reckons our old “crab tree” standing to have come to an end at the cross, as before Him, judicially; that our old man has been crucified with Christ: that we have been “cut off” as men in the flesh (Col. 2:11), and that we are no longer reckoned as “in the flesh.” Thus he can speak of the time when we were in the flesh (Rom. 7:5), and in Rom. 8:9 can plainly state, “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.” Just as the tree, if it could speak, would be able to say, “I haven’t lost my individuality as a tree; but though I was once a crab tree in the woods, I am now an apple tree in the garden.”
How unspeakably blessed it is, then, to know that God no longer sees us in connection with the condemned life of the first Adam, but in the risen life of Christ, the last Adam. “For ye are dead,” He says, “and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). “There is therefore now NO CONDEMNATION to them that are IN CHRIST JESUS” (Rom. 8:1).
Let me add a practical word in conclusion.
Which Nature Shall I Feed?
We have seen that there are not only two natures, but that, with their different origins, they have widely different tastes: thus there are “the things of the flesh” and “the things of the Spirit.” Let us not forget that both these natures will be daily calling our attention to their distinctive cravings. See those two young birds in that hedge sparrow’s nest; both are clamorous for food. The young cuckoo that was hatched there cries, “Feed me!” and the little hedge sparrow in the same nest cries, “Feed me!” So with the two natures; only, that while both those nestlings thrive on the same kind of food, the two natures in a Christian cannot, for what feeds the old only starves the new; while that which is food for the new is thoroughly distasteful to the old.
We are told, therefore, in Rom. 13:14, to make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof; and in 1 Peter 2:11, to “abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” On the other hand, we are exhorted, “as newborn babes, to desire the sincere milk of the Word, that we may grow thereby” (1 Peter 2:2). Let us, then, be like vigilant sentries on the watch, challenging all that we read, think, do, or say with this test: Will this be food for the renewed nature? or will it minister to the flesh? Let us allow nothing to pass muster that would do the latter; for, as Peter says, it will only “war against the soul.” How many a difficulty would this simple question settle for us! And let us never forget that, part altogether from the question of the salvation of the soul, there are practical consequences in this world, both to our “sowing to the flesh” and “sowing to the Spirit.” “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:8). So that is we “sow to the flesh,” we may surely expect to “reap corruption.” But let us never confound the government of the Father’s hand with the love of the Father’s heart.
May increased tenderness of conscience and distrust of self be ours, dear fellow-believer. May Christ Himself be more and more our daily food — His precious word our constant delight.