The Possibility of the New
Man
Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, devised a drug called "soma," which was intended to take all the rough edges from life. There is no doubt that if mankind is to be saved, something radical needs to be done quickly. Man stands on the brink of hell. The forces building up in our world are so overwhelming that man everywhere is beginning to cry out in desperation: "What must I do to be saved?"
Everything in our world seems to improve but man. In his essential moral nature, which governs his relationship to his fellow man, he steals, murders, lies, cheats, and grabs. Since the beginning of time, he has remained essentially unchanged. The newspaper accounts of murder, rape, and brutality indicate that somewhere we have failed. After years of psychological study, Carl Jung said: "All the old primitive sins are not dead but are crouching in the dark corners of our modern hearts . . . still there, and still ghastly as ever."
Man is being forced to accept the reality of sin and the necessity of a new birth. Walter Lippmann said: "We ourselves were so sure that at long last a generation had arisen, keen and eager, to put this disorderly earth to right . . . and fit to do it . . . we meant so well, we tried so hard, and look what we have made of it. We can only muddle into muddle. What is required is a new kind of man." The great Danish philosopher Kierkegaard wrote a book entitled The Sickness unto Death in which he said: "Man is born and lives in sin. He cannot do anything for himself but can only do harm to himself."
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We are beginning to recognize the inability of man over the centuries of futile religious, cultural, moral, and educational efforts to change his own heart. Man has labored ineffectually to achieve his moral goals and change himself by the improvement of his environment. Now we are disillusioned and know that somehow the change must come from within.
Man's Attempts to Change Himself
At present man is experimenting in what are called the behavioral sciences, including anthropology, psychology, and sociology, in order to discover the laws of human behavior. The trouble with these experiments is that they ignore the fact of human sin. According to the new sciences, sin is largely imaginary. Man is the product of his environment. He is the happy or unhappy product of a combination of genes and chromosomes. In this pseudoscientific sentimentality, a juvenile delinquent is merely underprivileged and a robber is simply maladjusted. In this philosophy we abandon the idea of sin and individual responsibility and blame everything but the offender. Therefore we have nothing to cure but man's environment in terms of bad housing, slums, poverty, unemployment, and racial discrimination, while the prime suspect, the individual, remains untouched and unchanged. Man himself and his behavior, according to this new science, are considered to be the result of natural selection.
Then there is man's attempt to change himself by chemistry. Scientists at present are deeply involved in the control of behavior by pharmacological agents. We are on the verge of a vast development of drugs to control man's behavior. At first these drugs will be used only in mental illness, but there always lurks the possibility that world dictators may use them
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to control entire segments of society. These are the drugs "That shape men's minds," for "with new devices scientists are finding out how to manipulate your emotions, your thoughts, and your behavior." These drugs "change minds, alter sensations, perceptions, moods, desires, ways of thinking, and acting."1
Professor B.F. Skinner of Harvard University said: "We are entering the age of the chemical control of human behavior. The motivational and emotional conditions of normal daily life probably will be maintained in any desired state through the use of drugs." At best, however, such drugs will provide only temporary changes either for better or worse, depending upon the nature of the administrator, with probable permanent damage to the brain.
The New Birth
Jesus Christ demanded: "Ye must be born again" (John 3:7). He would never have given such a challenge, had it not been a possibility. Yes, man can be changed, radically and permanently, from the inside out. There is the possibility of a completely new man.
It is interesting that Jesus made this statement to Nicodemus, an upright and devout religious leader, who must have been stunned to hear it. If Christ had said this to Zachaeus, who had cheated his way to the top of his own financial world — or to the woman at the well, who had had several husbands — or to the thief on the cross — or to the woman taken in adultery, it would have been easier to understand. We know that those persons needed changing. But Jesus said this to one of the great religious leaders of His time. Nicodemus fasted two days a week, spent two hours daily in prayer at the temple, tithed all his income, taught as a professor
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of theology at the seminary. Most churches would have been glad to have him; but Jesus said: "It is not enough. You must be born again." This implies that all men need the new birth, and it also implies that all men can be born again.
Dr. Wilbur M. Smith in a recent column of Peloubet's Select Notes has given the following specific analysis of some aspects of the new birth: "What do we mean by a man being born anew, or born again? To begin with, it means something tremendously radical. What we are by nature we are because of what we were when born. At birth our gender is settled, the very frame of our body is already determined. No doubt our very temperament, our capacities, our habits, our inclinations, are all given to us at birth, at least fundamentally; indeed our very appearance. To be born again at least implies an absolutely new beginning, not a reformation of life, not a turning over of a new leaf, not the addition of some one new attribute or aspect or capacity, but something so radical that by it we are going to be something altogether different from what we have been. Of course, anyone knows that we cannot be born the second time physically. Therefore the reference here is spiritual, a rebirth not of body, but of soul, and mind, and character. Again, we should notice . . . the universal inclusiveness and absolute necessity for such a miracle as this, if one is to be a member of the kingdom of God. No one is excepted, and no one can substitute something else for this tremendous reality."
To its own shame and to the detriment of society, the modern church has to a large extent abandoned this message of the new birth. It preaches social change, disarmament, and legislation; but it does not major in the one thing that will solve the problems of our world — changed men. Man's basic problem is spiritual, not social. Man needs a complete change from within.
The Bible refers many times to this change Jesus talked about.
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The prophet Ezekiel said: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you" (Ezek. 36:26). In the book of Acts, Peter called it repenting and being converted. Paul speaks of it in Romans as being "alive from the dead" (Romans 6:13). In Colossians Paul calls it a putting off of the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him (Colossians 3:9-10). In Titus he calls it "the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). Peter said it was being "partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). John termed it passing "from death unto life" (John 5:24). In the Church of England catechism it is called "a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness."
Thus the Bible teaches that man can undergo a radical spiritual and moral change that is brought about by God Himself. The word that Jesus used, and which is translated "again," actually means "from above." The context of the third chapter of John teaches that the new birth is something that God does for man when man is willing to yield to God. As we have already seen, the Bible teaches that man is dead in trespasses and sins, and his great need is LIFE. Man does not have within himself the seed of the new life; this must come from God Himself.
One day a caterpillar climbs up into a tree where nature throws a fiber robe about him. He goes to sleep and in a few weeks he emerges a beautiful butterfly. So man — distressed, discouraged, unhappy, hounded by conscience, driven by passion, ruled by selfishness, belligerent, quarrelsome, confused, depressed, miserable, taking alcohol and barbiturates, looking for escapisms — can come to Christ by faith and emerge a new man. This sounds incredible, even impossible, and yet it is precisely what the Bible teaches.
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More Than Reformation
This new birth is far more than reformation. Many persons make New Year's resolutions only to break them because they do not have the capacity to keep them. Man is ever reforming, but reformation at best is only temporary. Man's nature must be transformed.
A group of barbers at their annual convention decided to exhibit the value of their tonsorial art. They found a derelict on skid row, gave him a haircut, shave, and a bath; and they dressed him in new clothes of the finest tailoring. They had demonstrated to their satisfaction the worth of tonsorial excellence, but three days later the man was in the gutter again. He had been outwardly transformed into a respectable-looking man, but the impulses and drives of his inner being had not been changed. He had been powdered and perfumed, but not changed.
You can scrub a pig, sprinkle Chanel No. 5 on him, put a ribbon around his neck, and take him into your living room. But when you turn him loose, he will jump into the first mud puddle he sees because his nature has never been changed. He is still a pig.
Through the new birth the Bible teaches that man enters a new world. There is a new dimension of living. The change that comes over a man is expressed in the Bible in various contrasts: lust and holiness, darkness and light, death and resurrection, a stranger to the Kingdom of God and now a citizen. The man who has been experienced the new birth is called a member of God's household. The Bible teaches that his will is changed, his objectives for living are changed, his disposition is changed, his affections are changed, and he now has purpose and meaning in his life. In the new birth, a new life
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has been born in his soul. He receives a new nature and a new heart. He becomes a new creation.
Nicodemus was puzzled by these statements of Christ, and he asked: "Can I enter into my mother's womb and be born the second time?" This was a natural response any one of us would have made. So much of what Nicodemus believed had been swept away. He was finding out that religion was not sufficient. The Law of Moses could not save him, because he was not really fulfilling it's requirements. He had to be born again. He was told that no one could enter the Kingdom of Heaven without having eternal life, for nothing but "God-life" can exist there. He who has that life will be admitted. The great question is Do I possess eternal life? If not, how do I get it? This is the most important question a man can ask or have answered.
The Bible tells of many men who have been changed by an encounter with Jesus Christ. There is the demonic whose chains could not bind against the power of his seizures, but when he met Jesus he was changed and later was found in his home "clothed and in his right mind." No longer was he the prey of hallucinations. No longer was he in the grip of Satanic power. No longer had he the fears that had constantly beset him. No longer was he a menace to the community. He had become a changed man in character, dress, conduct, and even in environment (Luke 8).
There is Zacchaeus, who defrauded the people as a tax-gatherer. When he met Jesus, all was changed. He proceeded to make restitution. "The half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold" (Luke 19:8).
Most of these encounters with Christ resulted in an instantaneous transformation. On the day of Pentecost there were three thousand who were born again that very day. In the morning they were lost, confused, and sinful. Before the day
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had ended, they had been born into the Kingdom of God. Each one had passed out of death into life (Acts 2:41).
A young man named Saul was on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians when he met Christ under the hot Syrian sun. He was never to be the same again. Over and over he referred back to that encounter. He was able to look back and speak about it years later, remembering the very day and the very moment when he met Christ (Acts 9).
The Philippian jailer had a similar experience. When he was gripped by fear, he cried out: "What must I do to be saved?" The Apostle Paul told him: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." Many modern psychiatrists might say that he was in no emotional state to make a permanent decision. Paul did not look at it that way, and he baptized the jailer that very night. The jailer then began to wash their wounds as a token of the new life he had received from God (Acts 16).
Any person who is willing to trust Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour can receive the new birth now. The early Methodist preachers were called the "now preachers" because they offered salvation on the spot. It is not something to be received at death or after death; it is to be received now. "Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). God offers eternal life to anyone who will receive it.
Suppose I offer a gift to you. There is a moment when you do not have it, and the next moment you do have it. Eternal life is a gift from God. There is a time when you do not possess it, and there is a time when you do possess it. There must be a moment when you accept it.
Joan Winmill, a young actress on the London stage, had everything and yet nothing. She was like thousands of professional people today who have talent, money, and success — but a life of emptiness. She had reached the place of considering suicide
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when out of curiosity she came to an evangelistic crusade in Harringay Arena. When the invitation was given to receive Christ, hardly knowing what she was doing, she responded and received new life. She became a completely new woman, and today she is one of the most radiant Christians I have ever known. She has purpose and meaning in her life.
Jim Vaus was Mickey Cohen's wiretapper and a leader in the underworld on the West Coast. Somehow he wandered into a tent where an evangelistic meeting was being held in Los Angeles. He responded to the appeal to give himself to Christ, who so completely changed Jim Vaus that he has become one of the great religious and social workers of our time.
I could recount countless illustrations of men and women who have encountered Jesus Christ. They have become new creations. Their whole lives have been transformed. They have entered a new dimension of life. They have been born from above. God's nature has been imparted to them. Where once they were filled with lust, greed, and selfishness, they now seek to glorify God by helping their neighbors.
Yes, man can regain paradise. He lost it in the Garden of Eden, but he can find it again through Jesus Christ. If enough men and women had this new life, it could change the world in which we live! This is the only hope, the only remedy. There is no other. Man must undergo a complete renovation from within.
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1. Gordon Wolstenholme, ed., Man and His Future, p. 275.
