Booksnip (2)

James Boice, in his discussion of John 1:13, says this:

The Biblical doctrine of rebirth takes everything away from man and gives everything to God. It is the principle of the "seesaw" in theology. It is the principle that you cannot have both ends of the seesaw--God and man--up at the same time.... If you exalt man in your thinking so that he is able to take care of himself spiritually and eventually inch his way into heaven, then God will be down and there will not be much need for him. But if man is down where he should be and where the Bible places him, dead in trespasses and sin, with a depraved will and utterly without any genuine spiritual potential, the God will be up where he belongs. He will be great and mighty and altogether lovely, as he is. And the Christian, when he comes to see these things, will look up from the dung heap of this world, still covered with much of the world's refuse, and say, "Oh, my God, how could you love me?" And when he gets to that point the love of Christ will begin to constrain him, and he will begin to learn that God has set things up this way so that it will be with the bonds of love and not the whip of the law that we are drawn to holiness through the Lord Jesus Christ.

From The Gospel of John, Volume 1, by James Montgomery Boice, p. 83.