There were two little boys standing at a fire; one was called Alick, and the other Willie. Alick was ten years old, and Willie only six.
“Willie,” said Alick, “it is just a year and a half since I began to live.”
“And I have not begun to live yet,” said Willie in a sad voice.
Do you know what these two little boys meant? Alick meant it was just a year and a half since he had learned to love Jesus, and poor Willie meant that he did not love Jesus, that he was not converted or “born again” at all, and this made him very miserable; indeed, so miserable that a kind friend noticed his sad face, and found out the cause of all his trouble. He soon found for him that beautiful verse,
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;” and Willie believed this, and it made him so happy.
He took a pencil and paper, and copied out the whole verse, which he called his text. He then took every Bible in the house, and marked the verse with his pencil, so that he might always be able to find it in any of the Bibles.
Now, the day Willie believed in Jesus was his “new birthday,” We are not all converted in the same way that Willie was. Perhaps we may have been at a preaching, or at a children’s meeting; or it may have been at our mother’s knee, while she told us of the love of Jesus; or perhaps it was when we were quite alone that we felt unhappy about our sins, and found that Jesus had borne them all away—that He had died for us, and was our precious Saviour.
And some little children do not know when their birthday was at all; because God was so kind to them that He put them in a happy home with a mother who loved Jesus, and who taught them about His love, and trained them up for Him as soon as ever they had any sense at all, and so they have always known about Jesus and loved Him, and tried to please Him even before they can remember. So these little children do not know when their new birthday was; but that does not signify, for they know Jesus, and that proves they have one, though they do not know when it was; for the Bible says:
“He that hath the Son, hath Life,” and God knows when it was.
There was once a little girl who had to write out a list of the names of Jesus. She could only remember a few, but last of all she put,
“And He is my own dear Saviour.” This little girl had a “new birth” day, or she could not have written this.
Now, without this “new birthday” we can never get to heaven, for Jesus says we “must be born again.”
When we are born into this world we have only got a bad nature, which, as we grow older, shows itself in all kinds of sins. So that even a little baby, who has never done anything naughty, has a bad nature, and when a baby dies and goes to heaven, it does not go there because it is “a little angel,” but because Jesus “came to save that which was lost” (Matt. 18: 11), and this little baby was “lost” when it was born. But when we are born again, we receive a new and holy nature like Christ’s, a nature that cannot sin (1 John 3:99Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. (1 John 3:9)).
Our first birthday is the beginning of our life on this earth; it is the beginning of a short life, lasting at most but a few years. But our “new birth” day is the beginning of an eternal life in our souls; it is the beginning of a life that belongs to heaven and not to this earth at all—an endless life that can never die, that can never be lost.
ML 03/09/1941