The Gospel (part 5)

by

BERT BAUMAN

THE SEED OF LIFE

Knowing the power in the gospel, Paul encouraged the Philippians to hold forth the word of life. All life springs from seed, each seed yielding after its kind, I Peter 1:23 teaches that we “are born again not of a corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.  In His parable of the sower, Jesus revealed “the seed is the word of God”. God or the Son is pictured as the husbandman or farmer. A farmer sows seed according to his will. He prepares the soil and he plants the seed. No life is possible until he plants the seed. In the human family, no life comes into being until the father plants his seed in the prepared womb. This obvious and basic principle of life is forgotten in our present-day theology. Though Jesus taught that spiritual birth is like human birth, somehow, we are told by today’s preachers that we are responsible to bring ourselves into life. Evangelists often quote the words of Jesus to Nicodemus as a command: “You must be born again”, they thunder! Indeed, we must! Buti is it possible for the spiritually dead to do anything to produce spiritual life? In the context of John 3, it is clear that GOD ALONE has the ability to produce spiritual children through spiritual birth, for we must be “born of God” just as we were born of Adam.

Extract from the book “The Gospel” by Bert Bauman