Conversion vi / Regeneration
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
(Ezek.36:25-27)
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
(I Pet.1:23)
…if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!
(II Cor.5:17)
When we were looking at dimensions of our conversion such as reconciliation or justification we are looking at things God does to us. He credits Christ’s righteousness to us and then vindicates us; or He deals with His hostility to us in the death of Christ and in so doing, reconciles us to Himself. When we think of regeneration we are beginning to think more in terms of what God does in His.
The basic idea is that of ‘new creation’. God works in us by His Spirit to recreate or change our very nature, so that we possess spiritual capacities and abilities we didn’t have before. Through this instantaneous event God imparts spiritual life to us. It is our new birth, our being born again / from above (Jn.3:3-5); our being born of the Spirit (Jn.3:8, with Ezek.36:25-27 lying behind Jesus’ teaching. See also Titus 3:5-6). In terms of our reading from Ephesians (see below), it is the moment of transition from being ‘dead in transgressions and sins’ (2:1), to being made alive in Christ (2:5, see also Col.2:13, Rom.4:17). The Bible simply states it as fact, never explaining the spiritual mechanics of how this is achieved. The closest we get to an answer is Peter’s doxology: ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...’ (I Pet.1:3). The new life we receive in our new birth is linked to (likely a foretaste of) the New Creation life that Jesus inaugurates in His resurrection from the dead. Yet while the logistics remain a mystery, it affects everything we are. The transformation is as total and as far-reaching as the difference between a stone statue and a living human being.
Jesus explains the absolute necessity of this re-birth as he instructs Nicodemus (John 3:1-8). And in doing so He underlines too the absolute necessity and sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, as ‘the sole Author and active Agent’ (Murray, 99). We are as dependent on the Holy Spirit in our new birth as we were on our parents in the old one (Jn.1:12-13)! Such a radical change in our nature is something utterly beyond our power to achieve. It requires in its entirety a miraculous intervention, which seemingly occurs as we hear the ‘Good News’.
As we hear of Christ in the Gospel, His Spirit is at work bringing us to life and recreating us through the Word of God, enabling to respond to that Gospel. Hence I Pet.1:23-25, ‘For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God … And this is the word that was preached to you’. The same connection is made by James: He chose to give us birth through the word of truth (1:18). This is a powerful motivation to ensure that the message we believe and proclaim is in fact the Word of God. We tamper with the place of the Word of God in our Church’s life and mission at our peril.
If this is fundamentally a work of God that is deeper than our conscious awareness, so that it isn’t discernible to us, how can we know if it has happened? The Apostle John outlines for us three critical tests we can apply. The first relates to our ability to believe in, and our desire for the Bible’s teaching about Jesus. We find this articulated in passages such as I John 5:1, ‘Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God…’. The question of what we believe is not merely intellectual. Alongside this is a relentless desire for holiness, through which the Spirit is at work to slowly change the pattern and direction of a life as we learn to overcome the pressure of the world to shape us (e.g. I Jn.2:29, 3:9, 5:3-4 etc.). And thirdly our love for the Church (I Jn.4:7-8). These are inevitable outworkings and evidences of the experience of regeneration. Just as you cannot be ‘born again’ without believing in Jesus, so you cannot be born again and not be growing in holiness, or in your love for the Church. By their fruit you will know them!
Questions
If someone said that they were a Christian, but not one of those ‘born again’ kind of Christians, what would you say?
In Jn.3, what do you think Jesus means when He talks about being born of water and the Spirit (Jn.3:5)?
As you reflect on the Apostle John’s ‘tests’ from I John, do you end up feeling more secure or less (I Jn.5:13)? Why is that?
Read Eph.2:1-10
As you read through Eph.2:1-3, do you think this is a fair description of people who aren’t Christians? Do you think it is right to suggest that people don’t have any ‘natural’ ability to respond to Jesus?
How would you explain that this is what the Bible teaches to someone who isn’t a Christian?
What do you think Paul is seeking to convey with his use of life / death language (2:5)? In what sense are Christians alive in a way that non-Christians are not? What difference would that make to us?
What does Paul mean when he talks about our being ‘seated … with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus’ (2:6)?
How does Paul’s teaching in this passage highlight and celebrate the love, mercy and grace of God (2:4, 7-9)?
What is Paul driving at when he says that our faith is not from ourselves, but is a gift from God? How does this lead to humility on our part (2:9)?
How does understanding the Gospel more clearly inspire our ‘good works’ (2:10)? How does the fact that God has already prepared those good works make you feel?
Memory Passage:
Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.” The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
Jn.3:5-8
For further reflection:
Amongst theologians, this is one of the most contentious elements of the Bible’s teaching about what happens when we are united to Christ. A generation ago John Murray wrote: ‘[W]e are compelled to ask the question, how can a person who is dead in transgressions and sins, whose mind is enmity against God, and who cannot do that which is pleasing to God (Rom.8:7-8), answer a call to fellowship with Christ? … and how can a person whose heart is depraved … embrace Him who is the supreme manifestation of the glory of God?’ (p.95). It is, he suggests, a ‘moral and spiritual impossibility’. The doctrine of Regeneration, of God’s re-creative power, is put forward as the answer to this conundrum. This, argues Murray, ‘makes possible what would otherwise be impossible’ (so Matt.19:25-26). It is because we are changed that we are able to respond to the Gospel.
Note the order. Because we are born again, we are able to put our faith in Christ. We might well have assumed it was the other way round, i.e. we put our faith in Christ and then we are born again. This is an aspect of the Bible’s teaching that unashamedly celebrates God’s sovereign initiative in our becoming Christians (Jn.3:8).
Paul tells us that ‘He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus’ (Phil.1:6). He is the Pioneer (Author) and Perfecter of our faith (Heb.12:2). He initiates a process of growth and spiritual development (Sanctification) that continues until we throw off this mortal coil (Perseverance). We’ll see in both those studies that our confidence and security rests in the fact that our salvation is, at the end of the day, God’s work, not ours.
