And only God creates. You can’t contribute to your birth and that’s why this imagery is selected. “So Jesus says, ‘Cast the net on the right hand side of the boat and you will find a catch.’ They cast therefore and they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish.” Haul it in there. We read the first three. He brought us forth. To put it in the language – the magnificent language of Colossians 1, the Father, we give Him thanks for He delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. Hmm. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! E. The Necessity of Regeneration. Notice this. What is true is not always popular, and what is popular…. We are all sons of disobedience. That’s what it means to be regenerate. Another way to say the same thing. Now it is fair to say that being regenerated or being born again or having the new birth, being made alive in Christ can refer to the whole of our salvation. XI. Then we can and will respond to His call. And that’s what begins everything. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians again, a very familiar verse, 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him. Then verse 6, “God who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness.’” God the Father of lights who in the creation said, “Let the light be” – “The God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ is the same God who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” It was when God turned on the light on the inside and John, particularly John, loves to parallel light and life. Stated in this manner, the doctrine of eternal generation is a biblical one that well represents the many ways in which Jesus is declared both the Son and eternal God. “When lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished” – here’s the same verb – “it brings forth death.” Sin produces death – same verb – God produces life. And the response to that was huge. The notion of "synergistic" regeneration leaves the door open for self glorification, pride, and a false salvation based on "works" or "choice". After justification and regeneration, we are called to continually grow in grace toward the end God has in store for us. It’s the same word that’s used, by the way, in John 3, you must be born from above, anōthen. When we deal with a doctrine in focus, when we look particularly at a doctrine, it obviously raises questions about how it relates to other doctrines. Oct. 7: vacation. We are aided and abetted, I think, in our superficiality by teachers and preachers who don’t think very deeply about these matters either. If you wanted to describe a person as not knowing God, a person who is cut off from divine reality, cut off from spiritual truth, cut off from spiritual understanding, the best possible analogy you could use is they’re dead. Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has given us life. The notion that there is a way to get born again, there is a way to become born again shows how superficially we understand Scripture. To believe that the sinner has the ability in himself to respond to the gospel is to believe a lie. That’s how children are born. Rich in mercy, great love – “He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ ... raised us up with Him, seated us with Him in the heavenlies.” By grace, did it all by grace. Although we enter a new relationship with God when we are justified, we still have to undergo a process of transformation to be the people God ultimately calls us to be. And yet on the other side, we know that those who are saved are saved because of the sovereign purpose of God. No one ever has. And by that, I mean the whole of my salvation. This article is also available and sold as a booklet. As I said before, when the Lord chooses an analogy, He chooses an analogy to convey a spiritual truth that is inherent in the simplest understanding of that analogy. The word “regeneration” appears only twice in the English Bible. In the Bible, the word always refers to spiritually related fields of study. Imputation VII. This view believes faith is the cause of salvation. The verb means to drag, to force, to pull, to overwhelm, and to compel. Monergistic again, not synergistic. Even our supposed righteousness is filthy rags. But none of that is true in spiritual birth – none of it. It is a compelling force. That’s why – let’s go back to John 1 for a minute, John 1, “But as many as received Him” – yes, you had to do that – “to them He gave the right to become the children of God even to those who believe in His name.” You had to do that. The sun doesn’t shine as judgment comes. It’s kind of a benign word. It’s from above. What are the marks of the Christian life? Thomas Aquinas is the Doctor Angelicus of the Roman Catholic Church. That little term, variation – interesting word. Verse 17, “Every good thing” – every good thing – “bestowed and every perfect gift is from above.” Pretty clear, isn’t it? We are all by nature children of wrath. You, connected to the prince of the power of the air. While some parts of the Christian Tradition have focused on justification alone, others have focused primarily on transformation that comes through faith in Christ. Whoever loves the Father, loves the child born of Him.” Verse 4, “Whatever is born of God overcomes the world.” Verse 11, “This is the witness that God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. Since the UK is now no longer a member of the EU, you may be charged an import tax on this item by the customs authorities in your country of residence, which is beyond our control. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Over time, we are shaped and formed more profoundly as followers of Jesus. They are spiritually apprehended and he is spiritually dead. I’d like to get in on it.” This is not synergistic. The Scriptural Terms for Regeneration and Their Implications. Here at Grace to You Europe we take our data protection responsibilities very seriously and, as you would expect, have undertaken a significant programme of work to ensure that we are ready for this important legislative change. Here’s the key, verse 18, “You are excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them and the hardness of their heart and they become callous, given over to sensuality to practice every kind of impurity with greed.” And so, in all these passages you have a picture of the condition of the sinner who is spiritually dead, spiritually incapacitated, spiritually ignorant, cannot understand, cannot examine, cannot apprehend. You are born of Him, that is by Him, through Him. There’s no faculty there. And there’s no other way. He raised us up. He who has the Son has the life. This is very, very helpful material, and it’s going to lead to your praise of God. Let me give you a couple of illustrations of it. © 2021 Grace to You. And you. In John chapter 5 and verse 21 – this is pretty specific – “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life” – there it is again. And I want to give you an illustration of it, because I think it’s so wonderful. In fact, John Calvin himself felt this word referred to the whole of salvation. He was in the beginning with God. This is the unilateral work of the creator God and only He can give life. And that is exactly the point of the analogy. Listen to 2 Corinthians 4:6, I just keep thinking of these verses. Birth happens to us not because we desire it, not because we want it, or not because we followed the steps to be born. GDPR is the new European privacy regulation, which will replace the Data Protection Act 1998 in the UK and the equivalent legislation across the EU Member States. He made us alive. And everything that comes down from above is good and perfect. All they ever preached was repent and believe, repent and believe, repent and believe. The utter impossibility of such a thing as doing something to be born apparently has escaped a lot of folks. Now to cut to the very important bottom line, if you will, this idea of regeneration or being born again or new birth is unmistakably presented in the Scripture as the first divine act in salvation. Paul … You’re talking about a pretty compelling dragging here. And I don’t think you do either if you’ve been listening. If there’s one phrase that captures the essence of reformed theology, it is the little phrase, regeneration precedes faith. But when the Bible starts talking about being born again, it no longer is talking about anything that you or I could do. The point is, there’s nothing in us to lift us up. And this question probably more than any other is what defines the essence of reformed theology. It is God who gives life, like turning on the light. So you can see that these are particular features in the great panoply of the doctrines of salvation, any one of which can refer in a general sense to my newness in Christ. A parallax is an apparent displacement or difference in direction or location of an object as seen from two different points, not on a straight line with the object. You, living in the lust of the mind, indulging the desires of the flesh in the mind. It is not a minimum exertion of effort. Good, agathon, the best, inherently good, qualitatively good; perfect, teleion, the end, the finish, the finale, the best, there couldn’t be anything beyond this; every good thing to the most extremely good thing is from above. They shift, they’re not consistent. The Father of lights. “And when her masters saw their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas, and dragged them into the marketplace.” This is not some kind of minimal force. It can’t possibly be clearer than that. That’s the irresistible grace. – “God.” Do you see how clear Scripture is on this? I can talk about being ransomed and I can mean that I have been saved and I can call it being ransomed. And that has so much to do with the life in this world, the sun, even the moon, changing the tides, and the stars giving a measure of light in the darkness. I can speak about being justified and by that I might mean that I’m a believer and you might understand that and you might see in the term justification the full understanding of salvation. How it is that we can believe that God saves whom He will by His sovereign power, and yet every person is responsible to believe the gospel. Question: "What is the biblical doctrine of illumination?" Oct. 1: BOM stuff, Oct. 2, Charge Conference. Four questions that are answered. So being born again or being regenerated clearly an analogy that speaks of something that happens to us apart from us. “But the one who does the will of God abides forever, and the one who does the will of God is the one who has been born of God.” And we’re back to that same idea. On the other hand, we celebrate and rejoice and praise God for the mighty work of salvation which He alone can do. We understand this as human sinfulness. Go to Romans chapter 3 and let’s review a little bit because all of these doctrines are intertwined and certainly the doctrine of total depravity, or perhaps better, total inability, utter sinfulness, is important to remember in the light of this particular emphasis on regeneration. Regeneration is new life. We used to have the sun shining here today earlier, and now it’s gone. --------------------------------------------- The words "predestination" and "election" are often used interchangeably by writers and speakers. If He wants to talk about what we do, He talks about faith. But, verse 14, sin and temptation, it comes from here. That’s the word, dragging. He brought us forth. Love is from God. That which may be known of God is in them. It is a compelling force. The doctrine of regeneration teaches us that salvation is more than a personal policy for salvation; it is the beginning of a transformed life to live out the call to love God with all our heart, soul, … Guest. The doctrine of regeneration does not in any way, shape, or form negate or lead us to understand that faith is not our responsibility. (New York, Doubleday, 1996), [3] Abraham, William., Wesley for Armchair Theologians (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), pp. And that’s the only way we could ever respond. You can’t cause yourself to be born. Because the world, it just passes away and with it all its lusts. Repentance has its conceptual roots in the Hebrew language. Documentation IV. God has revealed His law in their conscience and in their mind, the law of God written on their hearts. This is something in which the sinner is totally passive. We will have no desire for the things of God without the Spirit’s work; He must take the initiative. Our Father, this is so wonderful and blessed to consider because it is not remote, it is that good gift, that perfect gift which You’ve given to us who are so utterly unworthy. 19:28; John 3:3,5,7; Titus 3:5). And again I say, you can’t do something to get yourself born. John 21:6, you’ll like this one. You couldn’t have been active in your new birth. You talk about inability. So you have with the stars a coming and a going and an ebbing and a flowing, a shifting shadow, sometimes bright, sometimes not so bright, and then sometimes dark. God’s power is irresistible, greater than the power of sin and death. Its enemies marketed the doctrine in the 1970’s after a Southern Baptist layman who was running for the office of President of the United States announced that he was a “born again Christian.” Not long after this, many products on the market were described as “born again.” Love songs spoke of feelings which were akin to “being born again.” Actors and athletes alike were considered to be “born again” in their res… But I’m going to take one more run at this thing. But ransom is one component by which we are bought, ransomed, or redeemed by the price that Jesus paid. “No one can come to Me unless” – really? Answer: The word translated “doctrine” means “instruction, especially as it applies to lifestyle application.” In other words, doctrine is teaching imparted by an authoritative source. All rights reserved. You had to receive Him. Evangelism: The communication of the gospel by which one can be saved (Matthew 28:19). True faith, instead, is always a faith of the mind and heart. The doctrine of regeneration stresses man’s spiritual and eternal death apart from faith in Christ and new life in Him. One cannot simply mouth the words, “I believe in Jesus Christ,” like a magical formula and be justified. What a great title for God. And it does. And the first gift in the list, the first good and perfect gift is in verse 18, that gets you to verse 18. It is a maximum exertion of effort. This is not something the sinner experiences. It means to give life. Who? And you have different perspectives depending on where you are on the planet. You need to be born again. You’re doing what I’m doing! Then when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” Don’t be deceived about that, my beloved brethren. This verse, this single verse will act for us as the launch point to collect our thoughts, a point of departure, if you look at it another way, into the scriptural sky to see the wide range of the doctrine of regeneration. Let’s get this in mind. We sent you an email. So again there’s no capability. And the bottom line is simply this: It is impossible for someone to do something in order to be born. Now I want to go back to verse 17, I want to kind of unfold this just little duet here of two verses. It is the “T” in the acronym TULIP, which is commonly used to enumerate what are known as the five points of Calvinism or the doctrines of grace. Galatians 5:22 gives us the fruit of God’s Holy Spirit which are definite marks of the Christian life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Let me tell you something, John the Baptist never told anybody, “Follow these steps and you can be born again.” Jesus never said to anybody, “Here’s how to be born again.” No apostle ever did that in the New Testament, no prophet, no evangelist, no writer anywhere in the New Testament ever preached or told people how to be born again. The giver of light and the giver of life. In other words, when we are heading down a path separated from any consideration of God and the things of God, repentance would mean to literally change course and turn back on a path that led to the richness of God’s love and guidance. You know, He doesn’t bring you as we said last time, you know, kicking and screaming. Enter your email address and we will send you instructions on how to reset your password. I mean, it may sound in English like, “Oh come on,” you know, it’s kind of a gentle kind of – well in the Greek it’s elkuō. And all whom the Father calls come, as we saw in our study. And the source of it is God. But the word in English has come down parallagē to parallax. You might as well try to raise somebody at the local mortuary, or even better yet, go to the nearest graveyard and try playing an organ there, singing a few tunes, humming some lilting music, pleading with the corpses to see if they can raise themselves from the dead. We can respond to the Father’s drawing. That’s the fallacy of aberrant theology, saying that the sinner has within him the capability to produce life. This is describing for us the natural person apart from God’s gracious work. You’re dead. ( Log Out /  Conversion: One’s turning to God based on the gospel (Acts 26:18). It’s ridiculous. Extreme variation in the lights that God has created – extreme. The apparent displacement or difference, it’s only apparent in the direction or location of something because you’re looking at it from two different angles. This is just such a powerful concept, and in all honesty it is a simple uncomplicated concept, to be given new life. If it’s good, if it’s perfect, it came from above. Both appearances are in the New Testament. He made us alive – “together with Christ” – and He did it by sovereign power grace – “and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenlies.” He didn’t just make us minimally alive, He took us all the way up with Christ into eternal glory, “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ.” Even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive. What a great love that God has for us. While justification gives us new standing in relationship with God, regeneration is the way we describe the renewed ability we are given to live life in a new way. Let’s just ramble through a few passages here of 1 John. The completed registration allows us to send order and donation receipts to the email address you provided. The doctrine of regeneration teaches us that salvation is more than a personal policy for salvation; it is the beginning of a transformed life to live out the call to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength while loving our neighbor as ourselves. According to the Anchor Bible Dictionary article by Richard B. Hays, justification is, “A term that describes the event whereby persons are set or declared to be in right relation to God.”[2]  This is justification at its very simplest. You can’t recreate yourself. Who is the source? Bless God. We exist spiritually. You, one of the sons of disobedience. But we praise You and we thank You in Your Son’s name. You see, when it says in verse 17 He gives every good and perfect gift – bang – the first one in the list is life. The doctrine of regeneration, at its best, holds these together. XIII. Throughout the ages, people in every culture and religion have claimed some kind of revelation or enlightenment from God (whether true or … Why? It is not by the will of man. – “the gift of God.” It is, in fact, the first of His good and perfect gifts. Amen. He changes not. What can we say? But conversion is an aspect in the technical sense of moving from one to the other. And it is a drawing that is irresistible. What’s he saying? And again as I said, regeneration can refer to the whole of salvation and should be used that way. All right, here it comes, “The God of this world,” verse 4, 2 Corinthians 4, “has blinded the minds of the unbelieving – can’t see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” – so there you are, you’re dead. The stars start to fall. Why? What is regeneration? But when you’re talking about being born, you’re really talking about coming into existence and no one who is not in existence and comes into existence does so based upon something they did or something they desired or something they sought.

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