If I were selling seeds, and you purchased apple tree seeds from me, you would expect to assume the risk that those seeds may not properly germinate. Even if they did, the new seedlings would be vulnerable to any number of dangers to its fragile life. But if I could offer you an “incorruptible” seed, one that would be positively perfect, that would mature to bear perfect fruit, that would never grow old and die, and that furthermore couldn’t be killed, you would certainly consider that a “miracle” seed.
It is just such a claim that the Spirit of God makes in the Word of God, and the incorruptible seed is that very Word created in us as a new and perfect life, a divine nature, by the Spirit.¹ Divine life in the human soul truly is a miracle. Within that quickened soul, where there was once only an old fleshly nature that rejected God’s testimony and a mind that loved darkness (as we discussed in the previous column), there is now also a new nature embodied in a new man, “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24 ESV).
Evangelical Christian teachers make much of the act of believing, and of the fruit that follows faith, and it is well that they should. However, many pay regrettably little attention to the new life in the soul that makes that faith and its fruit possible, even though the Bible has more to say on the matter than one may initially realize. New birth from above enables a soul once dead in sins to receive and believe on Jesus Christ: “As many as received Him . . . that believe on His name . . . who have been born . . . of God” (John 1:12-13 JND). Being born of water (a figure of the Word) and the Spirit brings spiritual eyesight to those who were once spiritually blind: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”. When God implants divine life into a soul, then an apprehension of God’s spiritual kingdom or realm is possible by faith. The initiative and the “seed” are both God’s: “Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth” (James 1:18).
The old nature (the flesh) that once left us “children of wrath”² still remains within the believer, and sadly may be used as a tool by the enemy of our souls to our detriment and loss; but there is nothing that the world, the flesh, or the Devil can do to impair or destroy that new and perfect nature, until at last the believer is freed from the effect of evil when the Lord calls him home. How is it that we can make these claims as to the newly created life’s perfection and permanence? Let’s look at a few more Scriptures.
In I John 3:9, we are told that the one who has been “begotten (caused to be born) of God does not practice sin, because His seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he has been begotten of God.” The Apostle John often presents his case in the abstract and absolute, and so we learn from this verse that the saint as viewed by God (whose very seed, nature, and life are in the new man) cannot sin. That’s a remarkable statement that often goes unnoticed.
Not only is that new man morally perfect because it is like God, as we noticed above in Ephesians 4:24, but it is also permanent, immune from decay and death. A seed always imparts its characteristics to the plant, and parents always impart their characteristics to their children. The nature of the seed by which we have been born of God is manifestly “incorruptible”, so that its progeny must be incorruptible as well. “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever” (I Peter 1:22-25). What joy and assurance is in store for the believer who begins to appreciate the truth of all that comes with being born again!
¹ John 3:5,8; I Peter 1:22-25; II Peter 1:4; II Cor. 5:17; James 1:18 ² Ephesians 2:3
GREATER RICHES 