Credo Magazine

The latest issue of Credo Magazine is now available online. If you are not familiar with Credo I encourage you to check it out. It is an excellent resource and the entire website has a wealth of helpful articles. The theme of the latest issue is God's sovereignty in regeneration.

Regeneration and Conversion

Infants do not induce, or cooperate in, their own procreation and birth; no more can those who are “dead in trespasses and sins” prompt the quickening operation of God’s Spirit within them (see Eph. 2:1–10). Spiritual vivification is a free, and to man mysterious, exercise of divine power (John 3:8), not explicable in terms of the combination or cultivation of existing human resources (John 3:6), not caused or i nduced by any human efforts (John 1:12–13) or merits (Titus 3:3–7), and not, therefore, to be equated with, or attributed to, any of the experiences, decisions, and acts to which it gives rise and by which it may be known to have taken place.

- J.I. Packer

This week I have had two people ask me for more clarity on what I preached on Sunday. Since I am a sinful and flawed man I always assume that if there is a lack of clarity in what I preach it is my fault. I also assume that for every one person who tells me that I did not make myself clear enough there are many others who are thinking the same thing. So, here goes...

The text for Sunday's message was John 3:1-15 where Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about the new birth. The focus of the message therefore was on the doctrine of the new birth or regeneration.

Regeneration is the sovereign and mysterious work of God. If the new birth is the result of something we do or a commitment we make then Jesus has given us a truly confusing metaphor and he is not the teacher we assumed him to be. This, of course is not an option. In the new birth, God is the actor and we are the responders. Those who are children of God by virtue of faith in Christ "were born not of blood, nor of the will will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13). Unfortunately however there has been much teaching about the new birth which clouds the clarity of John 1 and 3. This teaching makes man the actors in the new birth and God the responder. But this simply cannot be.

Regeneration is the sovereign and merciful act of God to breathe life into a dead sinner. Dead men do not raise themselves. The blind do not restore their own sight. Prior to the new birth we are dead Lazarus rotting in the grave until that miraculous moment when Jesus cries "come forth!" We do not control or command this act of God's sovereign grace. Jesus drives this home by not only referring to the experience as being "born again" or "born from above" but by the word play in verses 7 and 8:

Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born uagain.’ The wind5 blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Here Jesus uses the word pneuma which can be translated as "wind" or "spirit." He is comparing the mystery of the Spirit's work in regeneration with the mystery of the wind. We can no more command and control the Spirit's work in regeneration as we can the wind. Further, in regeneration, the Spirit is not responding to something we do or a commitment we make any more than the wind responds to our will. For the one wanting to be told what to do in order to get born again, Jesus offers no answers. Quite the opposite. "The wind blows where it wishes...So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

So where does this leave us? Is deliberately placing our faith in Jesus irrelevant? Do we not have to believe? Are we always entirely passive? Is this not fatalism to some degree? These are legitimate questions based upon what I have written thus far.

This is where conversion comes in.

Conversion is our act of repentance from sin and faith in Christ as our only Savior. But how do hardened sinners who are dead in trespasses come to grieve over sin and delight in Jesus? The only hope the sinner has is through the new birth which is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration, therefore, must come before conversion. The new birth is what produces conversion. We can state it like this: Regeneration (the new birth) is the root while conversion (repentance from sin and faith in Jesus) is the fruit. By God's grace, the second will surely follow the first.

So without a doubt, faith in Jesus is absolutely necessary for salvation. We are saved by grace through faith. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." But how do we come to the place where we willingly and joyfully place our faith in Jesus? Outside of Christ, our hearts are darkened and we are dead in our sins. We cannot understand the things of the Spirit for they are spiritually discerned. So what makes the difference between the one who believes in Jesus and the one who rejects Him? Is it that believers are wiser or more moral? Certainly not. The difference is the sovereign grace of God in the new birth.

If our faith and repentance produce the new birth then we must conclude that regeneration is at least a cooperative effort between God and man. What is more, we must conclude that unregenerate sinners, dead in their trespasses are not able to repent and trust in Jesus before they are brought to new life.

"I say that man, before he is renewed into the new creation of the Spirit's kingdom, does and endeavours nothing to prepare himself for that new creation and kingdom, and when he is re-created has does and endeavors nothing towards his perseverance in that kingdom; but the Spirit alone works both blessings in us, regenerating us, and preserving us when regenerate, without ourselves..."
- Martin Luther from Bondage of the Will, pg. 268

"Faith in the living God and his Son Jesus Christ is always the result of the new birth, and can never exist except in the regenerate. Whoever has faith is a saved man."
- Charles Spurgeon

"Regeneration is monergistic: that is, entirely the work of God the Holy Spirit. It raises the elect among the spiritually dead to new life in Christ (Eph. 2:1-10). Regeneration is a transition from spiritual death to spiritual life, and conscious, intentional, active faith in Christ is its immediate fruit, not its immediate cause. Regeneration is the work of what Augustine called “prevenient” grace, the grace that precedes our outgoings of heart toward God."
- J.I. Packer

"Why do some people repent and respond by faith in Christ to the divine summons to faith while others do not? Concerning those who believe in Christ’s name John immediately says in John 1:13: “[These are they] who have been begotten [egennēthēsan], not by blood, nor by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of a husband, but by God.” By this particular reference to God’s “begetting” activity John refers to regeneration, and clearly suggests by his statement that, while faith is the instrumental precondition to justification and adoption, regeneration is the necessary precondition and efficient cause of faith in Jesus Christ. In short, regeneration causally precedes faith."
- Robert Reymond

A Few Relevant Scriptures:
1. "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved..." (Ephesians 2:1-5)
- Regeneration ("made us alive") happens before any faith response on our part.

2. "And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live...Then you shall know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD." (Ezekiel 37:14)
- Notice that God says through the prophet that he will make his people alive and THEN we will know that he is the Lord.

3. "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me [i.e. believe in me] unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:63-65)

4. "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God." (1 John 5:1)
- Those who believe do so because they have been born of God (regeneration).

Please take time to check out the following excellent articles:
Regeneration Precedes Faith by R.C. Sproul
The New Genesis by R.C. Sproul
Regeneration by J.I. Packer
Regeneration by Wayne Grudem
Regeneration by Robert Reymond

Two Views of Regeneration by John Hendryx

Grace Alone: An Evangelical Problem? by Kim Riddlebarger

Update:

I have corrected a small typo in the final sentence of my post just prior to the Martin Luther quote. Amazing how one little word like "not" makes all the theological difference in the world!

The New Birth

On Sunday I am preaching on the miracle of the new birth from John 3. This evening I found some wonderful words from Warren Wiersbe which are in his commentary on 1 Peter, Be Hopeful:

This miracle [the new birth] all began with God: we were chosen by the Father (Eph. 1:3-4). This took place in the deep counsels of eternity, and we knew nothing about it until it was revealed to us in the Word of God. This election was not based on anything we had done, because we were not even on the scene. Nor was it based on anything God saw that we would be or do. God's election was based wholly on His grace and love. We cannot explain it (Rom. 11:33-36), but we can rejoice in it.

'Foreknowledge' does not suggest that God merely knew ahead of time that we would believe, and therefore He chose us. This would raise the question.'Who or what made us decide for Christ?' and would take our salvation completely out of God's hands. In the Bible, 'to foreknow' means 'to set on's love upon a person pr persons in a personal way.' It is used this way in Amos 3:2: 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth.' God set His electing love on the nation of Israel. Other verses that use 'know' in this special sense are 1 Corinthians 8:3, John 10:14, 27; Matthew 7:23; and Psalm 1:6.

But the plan of salvation includes more than the Father's electing love; it also includes the work of the Spirit in convicting the sinner and bringing him to faith in Christ. The best commentary on this is 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14. Also, the Son of God had to die on the cross for our sins, or there could be no salvation. We have been chosen by the Father, purchased by the Son, and set apart by the Spirit. It takes all three if there is to be a true experience of salvation.

A little more on free will...

From John Samson:

"...no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.
- 1 Corinthians 12:3

"[we were]...born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

- John 1:13

We must bring clarity when we declare that man has no “free will” because many persons confuse coercion with necessity. Some believe that when we say people have no free will we somehow mean that their will is coerced from the outside into acting a certain way. But this could not be further from the truth. Apart from the Holy Spirit no one comes to Christ because people are in bondage to a corruption of nature... so they sin, not due to coercion, but of a necessity of their fallen nature. In his very helpful book, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will John Calvin clarifies:

There are four expressions regarding the will which differ from one another “namely that the will is 1) free, 2) bound, 3) self-determined, or 4) coerced. People generally understand a free will to be one which has in its power to choose good or evil …[But] There can be no such thing as a coerced will, since the two ideas are contradictory. But our responsibility as teachers is to say what it means, so that it may be understood what coercion is. Therefore we describe [as coerced] the will which does not incline this way or that of its own accord or by an internal movement of decision, but is forcibly driven by an external impulse. We say that it is self-determined when of itself it directs itself in the direction in which it is led, when it is not taken by force or dragged unwillingly. A bound will, finally, is one which because of its corruptness is held captive under the authority of its evil desires, so that it can choose nothing but evil, even if it does so of its own accord and gladly, without being driven by any external impulse.

According to these definitions we allow that man has choice and that it is self-determined, so that if he does anything evil, it should be imputed to him and to his own voluntary choosing. We do away with coercion and force, because this contradicts the nature of the will and cannot coexist with it. We deny that choice is free, because through man’s innate wickedness it is of necessity driven to what is evil and cannot seek anything but evil. And from this it is possible to deduce what a great difference there is between necessity and coercion. For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity will in an evil way. For where there is bondage, there is necessity. But it makes a great difference whether the bondage is voluntary or coerced. We locate the necessity to sin precisely in corruption of the will, from which follows that it is self-determined. (John Calvin, BLW pp 69, 70)

The Bondage and Liberation of the Will by John Calvin

On another similar topic, we must remember, since prior to salvation all are "in Adam" and void of the Holy Spirit, so there is no hope for us to be saved if left to ourselves. But God is merciful and He shows His mercy by doing something that is indeed against our fallen will, when He rescues us. To give you an illustration, if a parent saw their 3 year old child run out in the street, true love would not give them the "free will" to chose whether to be hit by a car or not, but would, rather, at the risk of their life, run out and scoop up the child making certain their child was not hit because the parent knows better than the child.

Which would be more loving? 1) for the parent to leave the final choice to be run over to the child's "free will" OR 2) For the parent to make certain that the job gets done, even at the expense of the child's so called "free will"? Similarly, the love God revealed in the Bible is one in which He makes certain his loved ones are delivered from His wrath, in spite of ourselves, for He always knows better than we. Frankly, I don't mind if He voilates my "free will" if it means that He is doing something for my good that I am blinded to in my stubborn, stiff-necked, fallen state. Remember, he does not reward us for faith, but gives us faith that we might be rewarded (John 6:63-65).

Believing is the evidence, not the cause of the new birth

The New Birth

This is an excellent collection of essays on Regeneration or The New Birth (http://www.mountzion.org/FGB's/nbirfg.pdf).

Horton on Grace (2)

More good stuff from Michael Horton’s article in the most recent issue of Modern Reformation Magazine:

“We work very hard today to make grace normal rather than utterly disorienting. We bend over backward backwards to show how Christianity is ‘practical,’ how it conforms to our common sense and moral intuitions. ‘Practical Christianity’ (deeds, not creeds) is touted, although the actual practice of Christians is, according to the statistics, indistinguishable from that of non-Christians. The ‘righteousness that is by works’ looks for somewhere to go and something to do, while ‘the righteousness of faith’ receives Christ as he comes to us in the gospel (Rom. 10:1-13)…

“Sharing a common heritage in the revivalism of Charles Finney, mainline and evangelical Protestants have trouble being recipients of grace. The church becomes an army of activists – social engineers, moral reformers, event planners, life coaches – rather than a theater of grace where God has the lead role. As a result, the focus is not on how God gets to us (the logic of grace) but on ‘inducements sufficient to convert sinners with,’ as Finney put it, following his basically Pelagian view of the moral ability of fallen people. Finney’s Systematic Theology explicitly denies original sin and insists that the power of regeneration lies in the sinner’s own hands…”

This, by the way is not far from the common conception held by many evangelicals, particularly Pentecostals, Nazarenes, Methodists, and Southern Baptists. Many of us grew up learning from well meaning pastors that being born again (regeneration) comes about as a result of something we do. But this is remarkably different from the teaching of Jesus. In answer to Nicodemas’ inquiry on how to gain eternal life in heaven Jesus said, “You must be born again” (or, “from above”). What a wonderful metaphor for regeneration! Is there anything with which we have less to do than our birth? Jesus is assaulting Nicodemus’ “can-do” approach to salvation; an approach that many evangelicals share. To further drive home the point that the miracle of regeneration is an act entirely of God’s free will, Jesus added, “The wind (a reference to the Holy Spirit) blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Horton goes on:
“American evangelicalism seems at least in its most popular forms today to be a version of spiritual technology – almost magic, with every new movement and best-selling author offering his or her own ‘Ten Steps’ to harnessing God’s power. In this context, grace is less God’s favor shown to sinners on account of Christ than the opportunity God has provided for greater spiritual and moral power if we cooperate properly, using our free will. John Newton the slave trader may indeed have been a ‘wretch,’ but surely not I…

“Grace can only be recognized in the face of Christ, for there the strangeness of God, of ourselves, and God’s method of redemption converge. Counter-intuitive, disruptive, and unsettling, the grace defined by Golgotha requires an entirely new set of presuppositions about God, ourselves, and how the relationship works. Yet the measure of the sheer gratuity of God’s grace is that it even gives us those new presuppositions in the very act of being given. Grace is God’s refusal to allow us to define ourselves or to have the last word. Rather, it is the surprising announcement that salvation is ‘not the result of human decision or effort, but of God who shows mercy’ (Rom. 9:16).”

Amen

An Unregenerate Denomination?

In May, John Hammett, professor of theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina made a special plea to the students gathered for chapel to take the issue of regenerate church membership seriously. Each semester a faculty member at Southeastern is asked to speak in a chapel service on a topic of particular interest to them. Dr. Hammett chose well.

The long Southern Baptist tradition of a “pray the prayer” or “walk the aisle” understanding of conversion has left our church rolls full of unregenerate church members. Professor Hammett told the students that the greatest problem facing Southern Baptists is not the surrounding secular culture but a Southern Baptist culture that seems to have lost sight of the necessity of regeneration in church membership. He decried the common practice of allowing people to join Southern Baptist churches without any interview process or means of accountability.

If you doubt the problem is pervasive then consider that Southern Baptists report some 16.5 million members. We often boast in the fact that we are the largest protestant denomination in the world. However, by our churches own reporting, the actual weekly attendance in Southern Baptist Churches is between 35 and 40% of the 16.5 million. This begs the question, “Where have all the Baptists gone?” In our fervency to up the attendance of our churches and inflate the number of baptisms that we report each year, we have too often looked the other way as our churches have received into membership people who show no evidence of genuine conversion. Why is it that some of our largest churches increase in attendance by only a fraction of the total number of the multiple hundreds they report to have baptized each year?

This summer, Southern Baptist churches will baptize God knows how many youth after camp and children after VBS without any genuine attempt to confirm the genuineness of their profession. It would be hard for me to quantify the number of adults I have spoken to who have reported their own spurious childhood conversions. They raised a hand at VBS or walked an aisle at camp and were quickly assured by a well-meaning pastor that they need never question the assurance of their salvation. Only in adulthood have they realized that there never was evidence of a truly changed heart.

Dr. Hammett suggested four reasons why a regenerate church membership is a “battle worth fighting”: It maintains a corporate witness; it insures a corporate health; it produces a love for unregenerate church members; and it honors and glorifies Christ. Further, Hammett proposed that churches compose covenants outlining the responsibilities of church membership that incoming members must sign. He also urged that churches reform their requirements for baptism and restore the practice of biblical church discipline. Wise counsel indeed.

I am astounded that the denomination that often refers to itself as “people of the Book” can get it so wrong in the most fundamental issue of all – regeneration. Contradicting Scripture, some of our most prominent pastors have preached and written that spiritual fruitfulness has no bearing on one’s salvation (Matt 24:13; II Cor 13:5; II Peter 1:10). Rather, they rely on unbiblical slogans like “once saved always saved” and assert that so long as someone prays the prayer they are “in” regardless of the contradictory evidence of an unchanged heart. If you don’t believe me then read Charles Stanley’s irresponsible book Eternal Security.

I am frightened by the notion of ever giving false assurance of salvation to someone who is not truly regenerate. Don’t misunderstand. Christians should not go through life doubting their salvation. Full assurance of salvation is a wonderful, Spirit wrought blessing. I fully affirm perseverance of the saints or the eternal security of genuine converts. But I wholly reject the eternal presumption of spurious converts.


I owe the details of Dr. Hammett’s speech to a May 8, 2007 Baptist Press article by Joy Rancatore.