Be not thou of therefore ashamed the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God;

When a child is born, the next thing is to train him up in the way he should go, that when he is old he may not depart from it. This is also the arrangement of God in relation to those who are born out of water into His family on earth. He disciplines and tries them, that He may “exalt them in due time.” Having believed the gospel and been baptized, such a person is required to “walk worthy of the vocation,” or calling, “wherewith he has been called” (Ephesians 4:1), that by so doing he may be “accounted worthy” of being “born of spirit,” that he may become “spirit,” or a spiritual body; and so enter the kingdom of God, crowned with “glory, honour, incorruptibility, and life” (Romans 2:7).