Some of us put great stress on what we are in ourselves.  This looms big with a great crowd scattered throughout the earth.  We know so much.  We have gotten it by dint of hard work.  We can do some things so skilfully.  We have worked into positions of great power among men.  Our names are known.  Sometimes they are spelled in large letters.

The broad word for this is culture, what we have gained and gotten by our effort, of that which is reckoned good, and which is good.  Culture is one of the chief words in our language to-day.  Whether spelled the English way or the German, it looms big.  It is one of our modern tidbits.  It is chewed on much, and pleases our palate greatly.  And culture is good, if it is good culture.

But, have you noticed, that you have to have a thing before you can culture it?  No amount of the choicest culture will get an apple out of a turnip, nor a Bartlett pear out of a potato, nor make a Chinese into an Englishman, nor an American into a Japanese.  Culture can improve the stock, but it can’t change it.  It takes some other power than culture to change the kind.  Here we have to be made of the same kind as they are up in the old family of God.  There must be a change at the core.  Then culture of that new stock is only good and blessed.

This is John’s second “not.”  It seems rather radical.  It completely undercuts so much of our present day notions.  If John is right, some of us are wrong, radically, dangerously wrong.  Yet John had a wonderful Teacher whom he lived with for a while.  And after He had gone, John had another Teacher, unseen but very real, who guided, especially in the writing of the old Jesus-story.  The whole presumption is in favour of John’s way of it being wholly right.  And if that makes us wrong, we would better be grateful to find it out now, while there’s time to change.  Being saved is not a matter of what we can do, of our culture, though this has its proper place.

And some of us put tremendous stress to-day on influence, what we can command from others, in furtherance of our desires.  Influence is spelled in biggest type and printed in blackest ink.  Whether in political matters at Washington or at London; in financial, whether Lombard Street or Wall Street; or in the all-important social matters, or even in the educational, the university world, the chief question is, “Whose influence can you get?” “What name can you quote?” “Whose backing have you?” Influence and culture are the twin gods to-day.  The smoke of their incense goeth up continuously.  Their places of worship are crowded, with bent knees and prostrate forms and reverential hush.

Have you noticed that Jesus hadn’t enough influence with the officials of His day to keep from the cross?  No:  but He had enough power to break the official emblem of earth’s greatest authority, the Roman seal on the Joseph tomb.  Rather striking that; intensely significant for us moderns. Peter hadn’t enough influence with the authorities to keep out of jail.  Sounds rather disgraceful that, does it not?  Aye, but he had enough power with God to open jail-doors and walk quietly out against the wish of those highest in authority.