Dear Brother Cash:

Having a few thoughts to offer on the above text I shall try to express them in as few words and in as plain language as I can.

The ideal I often hear in this day that belief is voluntary and that for the mere act of believing we are to receive much credit here on earth and eternal happiness in the presence of God. If belief were voluntary, how nice it would be. Then we could believe that we are happy, and all sorrow would pass away. We could believe that we are rich and poverty would lose its sting. We could believe that we are well, and there would be no more sickness to grieve, nor pain to trouble us along life's tumultuous journey. But alas! For all our plans for happiness here on earth we cannot believe in the absence of evidence, either real or fancied.

So, I think that it is not unreasonable to say that belief is an involuntary act, depending upon evidence. Therefore belief cannot be an act of the creature for which he is to get credit on the books of God, but, rather, is proof that evidence has been introduced, or that deeper things lie beneath the surface.

Let us consider what is the nature of those things. The man in sin, the man that is continually exhorted to believe and be saved by the sensational preachers of the day, is spoken of in the Bible as being dead in trespasses and sins, and alien from God and a stranger to the covenant of Grace, carnally minded and as such not subject to the laws of God, neither can he know them. Why? Because they are spiritually discerned, and he having no spiritual life has nothing in harmony with God, in fact no capacity to receive evidence

What, then, is necessary to receive evidence? He must have life in harmony with the evidence which he is to receive. We see in nature vegetable life cannot receive evidence from the animal kingdom, so neither can the animal, natural, carnal, or human life, or mind, receive evidence from the spiritual kingdom. Therefore the same thing is necessary today as was necessary in the day of Christ, to wit: you must be born again. "He that hath an ear to hear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches," said John the Revelator. In other works, he that hath been born spiritually, and therefore has spiritual ears, let him hear. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," and can only hold communication with the flesh. So we see here the reason why the natural man cannot receive the things of God, also why he must be born again.

The next question is, how can we be born again? The giving of life is a thing which God has reserved to Himself, not having delegated to man the giving of life even to the lower of vegetable kingdoms, so that today we see ourselves unable to make even a blade of grass and make it grow. It must first have the germ of life which is in the seed which God has created, and which is just as much alive as the full grown plant, although not as manifest

Therefore, God is not only our Creator and Father from a natural standpoint, but, if we are believers, He is out spiritual Father also. And as we do not choose our fathers before we are born, so we do not choose to be children of God before we are children of God. And, as we love our natural father, and choose to be in his presence after we are born, and have learned to know him, so also we love our heavenly Father and choose to be in His presence after we are born spiritually and not before.

As action is an evidence of life, and not the cause of it, so love for God and a belief in Him and a desire to be a Christian is not the cause of our being children of God, but, rather, the effects of it, proving that life already exists

So, I would say, the text teaches that our belief is a work which God has accomplished by placing in our sinful hearts spiritual life, unaided and unhindered by finite men and then giving us the evidence which we have been prepared to receive by having the faculties of spiritual life given us in regeneration. Then having ears to hear we can hear what the Spirit tells us; having eyes to see, we can see that which the Spirit shows us; and have been given spiritual emotions, which makes the children of God a strange and peculiar people, not even understood by themselves. In felling, hearing and seeing we gather up the evidence by which we believe. This evidence coming from a higher source than ourselves is beyond our control; therefore, the getting of evidence is not our work. The giving of life with all its capacities belongs to God alone, so that is not our work.

Then I must conclude that our belief in God depends entirely and unconditionally upon the sovereign will of God, and that the text means just what it says when it says, "This is the work of God that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent." "but," some say, "surely there is something for us to do?"

There certainly is, but it consists in praising God for what He has done for us, and His wonderful mercies to us, and not in trying to do that which He has reserved to do Himself. Moreover, it consists of helping each other along life's weary journey, bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ, and exercising and developing the life which He has given us. May He give us strength and a will to render that service and praise all the days of our life, and finally glorify Him in eternity. L. H. C.