Answers To Correspondents

Q. 32.-"In Help and Food, p. 125, you say,-'But there were some that received Him ; what, then, of these? In them divine power had acted ; to them divine life had been given :they were born of God, and now, too, 'given title to the children's place.' When were they born of God ? In receiving Christ? or does this apply to those who, having been born again before, received Christ afterward? and can this be now?"

Ans.-Of course it is true that when the Lord came on earth there were those who, like Simeon, having been born again before, received Him joyfully as so made known to them; yet even here it was, as is most evident, only the recognition of One in whom he had believed before. The real reception had, in the case even of these, then, been before.

But in the words of the gospel referred to, the point is that Christ is received only where there is a divine work in the soul to effect it. There is no statement that those who received Him had previously been born of God, but "as many as received Him . . . were born of God." The Lord tells Nicodemus, in the third chapter, that men are "born of water and of the Spirit." And we are taught elsewhere that "the washing of water" is "by the Word" (Eph. 5:26). The apostle Peter says plainly that we are "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God "(I Pet. 1:23). Is this without faith in it or in Him of whom it testifies? Assuredly, no; for "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you ; whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life" Jno. 6:53, 54). "He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God" (I Jno. 5:I).

It is impossible, then, to be born again without faith in Christ; and those who were so before His coming still received Him as the One to come. When come, faith in these, as in Simeon, recognized Him in whom they had believed before.

September 1886