h is born of the flesh is flesh, and the
kingdom of God is spiritual. Of course our Lord does not mean by flesh
the mere tangible substance of the body; He does not mean that our first
and natural birth puts us in possession of nothing but a material frame.
By the word "flesh" He signifies the appetites, desires, faculties,
which animate and govern the body, as well as the body itself--the whole
equipment with which nature furnishes a man for life in this world. This
natural birth gives a man entrance into much, and for ever determines
much, that has important bearings on his person, character, and destiny.
It determines all differences of nationality, of temperament, of sex;
apart altogether from any choice of his it is determined whether he
shall be a South Sea Islander or a European; an antediluvian living in a
cave or an Englishman of the nineteenth century. But the kingdom of God
is a spiritual kingdom, into which entrance can be had only by a man's
own will and spiritual condition, only by an attachment to God which is
no part of a man's natural equipment.

As soon as we clearly see what the kingdom of God is, we see also that
by nature we do not belong to it. The kingdom of God so far as man is
concerned is a state of willing subjection to Him--a state in which we
are in our right relation to Him. All irrational creatures obey God and
do His will: the sun runs his course with an exactness and punctuality
we cannot rival; the grace and strength of many of the lower animals,
their marvellous instincts and aptitudes, are so superior to anything in
ourselves that we cannot even comprehend them. But what we have as our
speciality is to render to God a willing service; to understand His
purposes and enter sympathetically into them. The lower creatures obey a
law impressed upon their nature; they cannot sin; their performance of
God's will is a tribute to the power which made them so skilfully, but
it lacks all conscious recognition of His worthiness to be served and
all knowledge of His object in creation. It is God serving Himself: He
made them so, and therefore they do His will. So it is with men who
merely obey their nature: they may do kindly, noble, heroic actions, but
they lack all reference to God; and however excellent these actions are,
they give no guarantee that the men who do them would sympathize with
God in all things, and do His will gladly.

Indeed, to establish the proposition that flesh or nature does