Dear Friends,

Sometimes it doesn’t really matter if you are fooled, but when it comes to eternal life it matter more than anything else. How might you be fooled? Today’s devotional explains. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

John 1:12-13; 3:3

“We may be the children of holy parents, but we are not therefore the children of God. To us it is clear that ‘that which is born of the flesh is flesh,’ and nothing more. Only ‘that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’ Yet we hear of persons whose children do not need conversion. They are spoken of as being free from natural corruption, and born children of God, having a grace within which only needs to be developed. I am sorry to say that my father did not find me such a child. He found out early in my life that I was born in sin, and shapen in iniquity, and that folly was bound up in my heart. Friends and teachers soon perceived in me a natural depravity; and assuredly I have found it in myself: the sad discovery needed no very minute research, for the effect of the evil stared me in the face in my character. This tradition as to our being born with a holy nature is gaining foothold in the professing church, though contrary to Scripture, and even to the confessions of faith which are still avowedly maintained. Certain preachers hardly dare formulate it as a doctrine; but it is with them a kind of chaotic belief that there may be productions of the flesh which are very superior, and will serve well enough without the new birth of the Spirit. This tacit belief will lead up to birthright membership; and that is fatal to any Christian community, wherever it comes to be the rule. Without conversion, in certain fellowships, the young people drift into the church as a matter of course, and the church becomes only a part of the world, with the Christian name affixed to it. May we never in our churches sink into that condition! That religion which is a mere family appendage is of little worth. The true seed are ‘born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XXXVII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1891), p. 39]