February
24
I can guarantee this truth: No one can
enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit (John 3:5
GW).
No one has ever yet been
"volitionalized" into the kingdom of God; that is, so appealed to in
their wills to make a decision, and to determine to be in the kingdom of God,
as by the strength of that decision and that determination to have got through.
It cannot be done. A great deal of mistake has been made in that connection,
and an entirely false position has been brought about for multitudes of people
because the effort has been made along those lines, and they have been appealed
to along those lines to exercise their own reason, and their own feelings, and
their own wills, as though that would regenerate them.
Thus interest and activity in Christianity is one
thing, but being in the kingdom is quite another. Multitudes of good-meaning
people are interested in Christianity, and are active in Christianity. They see
the value of the Christian standard of life, and Christian teaching, and have
thought if only it could be applied, how different the world would be. So they
have become busy in Christianity, and have thought they were in the kingdom of
God. Not at all! You can have all the interest in Christianity without being in
the kingdom. This is what the Lord Jesus said, in effect, and in other and more
concise words, to Nicodemus. The only way in is by our receiving Divine Life as
a gift through faith in Jesus Christ, and that becomes the new basis of the new
creation, the basis upon which everything begins and is carried through, the
basis of Divine Life. That Life has in it all the qualities and energies of the
new creation. It constitutes our being in what is called the Kingdom of God.
This photograph is from a Facebook page called Live Life in Color.
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