We have still another mystery in this short book of 1 John. Previously we have covered the mysteries of life, fellowship, abiding, the anointing, and the divine birth. By the divine birth a seed was implanted within us. This is the mystery we would like to consider now.
“His seed remaineth in him” 1 John 3:9 tells us, meaning that whoever is born of God has the seed of God abiding in him. A seed of any kind is a seed of life.
In the parables of the sower in Matthew 13, the Lord Jesus likened Himself both to a sower and to the seed. When He was on this earth, He sowed Himself as the seed into the soil of humanity. Human beings to Him are the soil in which He as the seed of life grows. Yet as that seed grows, many negative things arise to frustrate its growth. From this portion of the Word we can see that the seed mentioned in 1 John must be the Lord Jesus Himself as the seed of life.
First Peter 1:23 says that we have been “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” God’s word, then, is also a seed of life. Actually, to say this is the same as saying that the Lord Jesus is the seed of life, because He Himself is the Word of God. The living Word of God is the living Person of the Son of God. The seed of life is the Word and the Person.
The seed in 1 John, however, in a direct sense is simply the divine life with the divine nature. Our being is comprised of our life and nature. It is God’s life and nature which are imparted into us at the moment of regeneration.
We may pray a long, penitent prayer, thanking the Lord for dying on the cross and shedding His blood for our sins; taking Him as our Savior and confessing Him as the Son of God; and receiving Him as our Lord and our life. Long before we have finished praying, however, if we have truly prayed to Him from the depths of our being, we shall be regenerated. In a moment, the divine life and nature are imparted to us.
You may have no sensation that any such experience has happened to you. Do not depend on your feelings. Many things have happened to you, including your physical birth, of which you have had no sensation. You were born, but it did not depend on you. You have been born again, but that birth also is up to Him. Just as you had no say in whether you would be born in Massachusetts or in California, so in your second birth the decision is also out of your hands.
Man, as we have often pointed out, can be represented by three concentric circles. The outer ring corresponds to our physical body, the part of us that has substance and can be seen and touched. Besides this part, we have a soul, represented by the middle ring. This is the psychological part of us, enabling us to think, to love or hate, and to make decisions. The soul, then, consists of the mind, the emotion, and the will. The innermost ring, the deepest part of man, is the spirit. You may not be clear about the human spirit, but one part of it, the conscience, you are familiar with. The conscience is deeper than the mind, emotion, and will.
Such is the way man is made. Animals may have a part that corresponds to the soul, but they lack this inner part, man’s worshipping organ. There has never been a case in the whole of history where a donkey, or a monkey, or a goat built a little sanctuary and set up an image to worship! The record of mankind, in contrast, is replete with religions, idols, temples, and forms of worship. Cultured or barbarian, ancient or modern-all peoples have a desire to worship a higher Being. What accounts for this difference between man and the animals? What constrains man to worship? It is because man was made by God with a spirit.
What is the distinction between an unregenerated human being and a believer? Both have these three parts of body, soul, and spirit. The believer, however, has a divine seed in his spirit. The seed of God abides in him!
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