Page 20 - How to Be a Victorious Christian - eBook

This is the way it has to be. Please meet those requirements! I want you to be with
Me!"

The irreducible minimum that God must require is expressed in the words of Jesus to
the Pharisee, Nicodemus: "Jesus ... said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee,

Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3).

Plain Words

These words are as unequivocal, as straightforward, as it is possible for words to be.
Uttered as they were in love, nevertheless they made it plain that there is no
possibility of receiving eternal life, of having a part in the heavenly kingdom to

come, except as one experiences what is termed the new birth.

The words of Jesus are so plain that there is but one major question one needs to ask
in order that he may fully understand what they mean: What is this experience of the
new birth without which no man shall see heaven?

The Bible makes it vividly clear that the new birth means a radical change in the life:
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away;
behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5: 17); "A new heart also will I give you,
and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of
your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh" (Eze. 36:26).

The fact that the newborn person is described as "a new creature," or creation, for

which "all things have become new," who has "set ... [his] feet upon the new path of
life" (Rom. 6:4, N.E.B.), clearly indicates a fundamental, basic change. It is not a
grafting of new shoots into the old tree. It is a new and different kind of tree.

Not a Modified or Rearranged Life

It is not a modified life in which the sinner stops drinking and smoking, in which he
tries a bit harder to control his temper, appetite, and entertainment habits. It is not
merely an altered life, in which jewelry is left off, in which one day in seven is now
spent differently from before, in which newly adopted beliefs cause him to change
friends and the use of time. 6

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