10月6日 再造的改变

神……乐意将他儿子启示在我心里。(加一15-16)

主耶稣若要把我重生过来,要面对什么困难呢?我承袭的罪性,是我无能为力的;我并不圣洁,自己也不可能圣洁。若主耶稣所能作的,只是告诉我要圣洁,他的教训只会带来绝望;但主耶稣若是生命的再造者,能把自己圣洁的遗传放进人里面,我便可以明白要圣洁是什么意思。救赎就是主耶稣把自己的性情传袭到任何人身上,而他所设的标准,就是根据他的教训,为放进去的生命而设的。我在道德方面能作的,就是承认神在十字架上对罪的判定。

新约对重生的教训,就是当人深深感到属灵的需要,神就把圣灵放进他的灵里去,他的灵就被神儿子的灵所感动--“真等到基督成形在你们心里”。救赎的道德神迹,就是神把一个新性情放在我里面,以致我能活出全新的生命来。当我来到自己欠缺的极限,知道自己的有限时,耶稣说:“你有福了。”但要到达那境地,除非我先意识到自己的需要,否则,神不能把耶稣基督的性情放在我里面。正如罪性是因一人进入人类,同样,圣洁也藉另一个人进入。救赎就是透过主耶稣,把我从罪的传袭中救出来,领受一个无玷污的遗传,就是圣灵。

祈祷◆主啊,我的灵性--或更准确地说,是我的思想领域--仍是何等愚钝和模糊,以致琐碎的事情占据了庞大的范围,却将生命中那些重要的问题挤掉。求你拯救的大能释放我。

October 6 The Bent Of Regeneration

“When it pleased God . . to reveal His Son in me.” Galatians 1:15, 16

If Jesus Christ is to regenerate me, what is the problem He is up against? I have a heredity I had no say in; I am not holy, nor likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is to tell me I must be holy, His teaching plants despair. But if Jesus Christ is a Regenerator, One Who can put into me His own heredity of holiness, then I begin to see what He is driving at when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the hereditary disposition that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives are based on that disposition: His teaching is for the life He puts in. The moral transaction on my part is agreement with God’s verdict on sin in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a man is struck by a sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God, “until Christ be formed in you.” The moral miracle of Redemption is that God can put into me a new disposition whereby I can live a totally new life. When I reach the frontier of need and know my limitations, Jesus says – “Blessed are you.” But I have to get there. God cannot put into me, a responsible moral being, the disposition that was in Jesus Christ unless I am conscious I need it.

Just as the disposition of sin entered into the human race by one man, so the Holy Spirit entered the human race by another Man; and Redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin and through Jesus Christ can receive an unsullied heredity, viz., the Holy Spirit.