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lips of God Himself that He will forgive sin, no human creature can be sure that sin will ever be forgiven.^
11.
The Means of our Living Hope.
It is by means of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead that we obtain our living hope. But we are said not simply to obtain it but to be " begotten again " to it.
1. We are legotten again to a living hope. — These words speak of a change which can be described only in language to which nothing in human experience can possibly answer. There is no such thing in nature as being begotten again, as a new and second birth. That word " regeneration," which from Scripture and the Church has passed into the common phraseology of historical and political speculation, involves in its proper meaning an impossible conception — the conception of life once begun, beginning again ; and it is no wonder that Nicodemus, with his thoughts moulded and limited by experience and custom, stumbled at it. But nothing less than this strange and violent word would suffice to express the change which the Incarnation of the Eternal Son was to work in the souls of men. And no less a word will suffice for the Apostle, to express the change made in the condition and prospects of God's chosen by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Here, as in so many other cases, we are not startled, we are not struck, from the long effect of use and habit. These amazing words of Scripture we have heard all our life long ; the language in which Prophets and Apostles set forth the wonderful works of God has been before our minds — minds often inattentive, often wandering, and anyhow seldom adeqjiately alive to its full import. In God's great goodness, these words have been made to us " current coin " ; but, as in current coin, the sharpness and fresh- ness of their first impress has been worn away by long familiarity, by the sin and the misuse of centuries, by the irreverence and unfaithfulness of human custom. If we could be carried back to the days when they were written — if we could hear or read an Epistle of St. Paul or St. Peter, as its words fell for the first time
* W. G. T. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 359.
38 A LIVING HOPE
or the second on the ears of those to whom it was originally written, and who were living in the midst of the things and events to which it referred — language which we now listen to with so languid an interest would take our minds captive with astonish- ment; what seems so trite, so tame, so vague, would start in every syllable into life and definite meaning and overpowering surprise; we should feel that we were hearing or reading of things never yet spoken of by the tongues of men, or of thoughts too mighty even for inspired minds.
The language is indeed astonishing, but not more astonishing than that which it represents. That which had come to pass in this world of ours when Jesus Christ died on the Cross and rose from the dead on the third day — that change of all beliefs, all suppositions, all hopes, all motives — that great change required a new outfit of words for its expression. To those who could not break with what they had been accustomed to, who could not imagine it possible that the Son of God could die for men, that any breathing mortal breath could come back from the grave, the new language was simply unintelligible — "unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness." But to those who did believe it, even the loftiest and most startling language must have seemed too weak : nothing but that sustained tone of expression, raised to its highest power and boldest strain, which prevails without exception throughout the Epistles of the New Testament, could in any degree correspond to what had now become the supreme realities of men's existence. To speak of a " new creation," to speak of " death being swallowed up in victory," of " life and immortality " being " brought to light," of men being " born again " into the sonship, and household, and inheritance of God — all this to them was no extravagance of Eastern rhetoric, but the plain " words of truth and soberness." Such a change as had been in the order of things here, when Christ died and rose again, more than authorized it. How could such things happen, and all things not be made new ? The anomaly would have been that men should have seen and should believe such wonders, and yet should speak only in the language to which the world had been accustomed before such things had happened.
^ The word is peculiar to St. Peter ; it is repeated in ver. 23 : " Being horn again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,
I PETER I. 3 39
by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever," In another form it occurs 1 Peter ii. 2 : "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word " (cf. Luke x. 21). Perhaps St. Peter was not present when our Lord discussed the new birth with Nicodemus. He certainly was present on a later occasion de- scribed in St. Mark ix. 33 : " And Jesus came to Capernaum : and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye dis- puted among yourselves by the way ? But they held their peace : for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest. And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them : and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them. Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me : and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me." "The house" in Capernaum was probably Peter's house ; and the child, if not probably, at least very possibly, Peter's child. The lesson of child-like simplicity inculcated both here and in the following chapter of St. Mark, where we read of Jesus blessing the infants and saying, "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein," was not lost upon St. Peter. It bears fruit in this letter of his old age.^