Worship Wednesday

Sorry it's been a while. Liquid+computer+puppy=no blogging!

From the Valley of Vision.

Regeneration

It is the glory of the gospel of God's grace that it provides for this incongruity. God's call, since it is effectual, carries with it the operative grace whereby the person called is enabled to answer the call and to embrace Jesus Christ as he is freely offered in the gospel. God's grace reaches down to the lowest depths of need and meets all the exigencies of the moral and spiritual impossibility which inheres in our depravity and inability. And that grace is the grace of regeneration...God effects a change which is radical and all-pervasive, a change which cannot be explained in terms of any combination, permutation, or accumulation of human resources, a change which is nothing less than a new creation by him who calls the things that be not as though they were, who spake it and it was done, who commanded and it stood fast. This, in a word, is regeneration.

John Murray - Redemption: Accomplished and Applied

Sanctification always follows regeneration

In his book Holiness, J. C. Ryle makes it clear that sanctification, or growth in holiness, is not an option for the Christian. Ryle argues that without sanctification evidencing the Christian life, there is no reason to conclude that regeneration ever took place. Consider:

Sanctification, again, is the outcome and inseparable consequence of regeneration. He that is born again and made a new creature, receives a new nature and a new principle, and always lives a new life. A regeneration which a man can have, and yet live carelessly in sin or worldliness, is a regeneration invented by uninspired theologians, but never mentioned in Scripture. On the contrary, St. John expressly says, that “He that is born of God doth not commit sin - doeth righteousness - loveth the brethren - keepeth himself - and overcometh the world.” (1 John ii. 29; iii. 9-14; v. 4-18.) In a word, where there is no sanctification there is no regeneration, and where there is no holy life there is no new birth. This is, no doubt, a hard saying to many minds; but, hard or not, it is simple Bible truth. It is written plainly, that he who is born of God is one whose “seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” (1 John iii. 9.)

The living death of his own soul

In his Gothic novel about the hedonistic Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde penned a line that caught my attention. Towards the end of his life, the protagonist Gray began to contemplate his many years of fulfilling every desire of his soul in his pathetic pursuit of pleasure. Still unrepentant for all of his misdeeds, the main character was burdened by something; "It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him."

This sentence jumped off the page as I read and I immediately recognized that Wilde had done a wonderful job of describing the life of those who don't know Christ. Just like the novel's anti-hero, unregenerate people exist on this earth as souls in a state of living death.

The Bible says that all have sinned (Romans 3:23) and this sin has brought with it death; "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" (Romans 5:12 ESV). Even as we live, we live in a soul-state of death. Without Christ, we are dead to God, without hope in this world (Ephesians 2:12).

In that futile state, even the seemingly "good" deeds we do are nothing more than dead works (Hebrews 6:1). Paul the apostle put it very succinctly; even though we lived, "death reigned" (Romans 5:17). And that is where we were, dead to God and alive to sin.

Fortunately, God did not leave his elect in that state of living death. God saved us. Paul tells us, "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses" (Colossians 2:13 ESV).

If we have been regenerated-born again-than we are no longer living that ersatz life of deadness. We are "made alive". Interestingly, because of death-Jesus' death on the cross-we no longer are dead to God and alive to sin. Rather, the contrary is true; "For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ." (Romans 5:17 ESV)

Christians no longer share in Dorian Gray's living death. Christians now reign in life being in a state of death towards sin but alive unto God!

Wesley, Regeneration, and Justification

At The Scriptorum, Fred Sanders offers a great word on Wesley's view of justification and regeneration. It is well worth the read.

It’s one thing to be forgiven, and another thing to be born again. Both happen at once, but they are distinct from each other. They have to be distinguished clearly, in order to be united perfectly. It’s hard to know whether it’s more important to distinguish them, or to insist that they go together. John Wesley may have been the most successful at distinguishing and uniting them in his preaching.

Nearly everything Wesley taught flowed from his understanding of the new birth, because the new birth (or regeneration) is where the great salvation proclaimed in the gospel actually enters into human experience. It is “a vast inward change, a change wrought in the soul, by the operation of the Holy Ghost.” And it is crucial that we see how Wesley related this doctrine, a doctrine about a change that takes place in the human subject, to the great objective truths of salvation in Christ.

Sermon 45, entitled simply “The New Birth,” begins with the important distinction: “If any doctrines within the whole compass of Christianity may be properly termed fundamental, they are doubtless these two; the doctrine of justification, and that of the new birth.” Note carefully how Wesley goes on to relate these two doctrines. He is not famous for his careful theological distinctions, but on this point he is ruthlessly, incisively cautious. Justification and regeneration must be distinguished from each other precisely so they can be held together; they must be understood to be different if they are to be recognized as inseparable. Justification, says Wesley, is a doctrine “relating to that great work which God does for us, in forgiving our sins,” while regeneration relates to “the great work which God does in us, in renewing our fallen nature.” Justification is for us, regeneration in us.

The two certainly belong together: “on the one hand, …whosoever is justified, is also born of God, and on the other, …whosoever is born of God, is also justified;” in fact, it is certain “that both these gifts of God are given to every believer in one and the same moment.” Both happen at once: “In one point of time his sins are blotted out, and he is born again of God.” They occur simultaneously in the “order of time,” but logically, conceptually, or in the “order of thinking,” justification comes first. “We first conceive his wrath to be turned away, and then his Spirit to work in our hearts.”

For this reason, Wesley cautions against confusing them, an error he says is all too common. “But though it be allowed, that justification and the new birth are, in point of time, inseparable from each other, yet they are easily distinguished, as being not the same, but things of a widely different nature.” And following out the “for us” versus “in us” logic, Wesley distinguishes them further:

Justification implies only a relative, the new birth a real, change. God, in justifying us, does something for us; in begetting us again, he does the work in us. The former changes our outward relation to God, so that of enemies we become children; by the latter our inmost souls are changed, so that of sinners we become saints. The one restores us to the favour, the other to the image, of God. The one is the taking away of the guilt, the other the taking away of the power, of sin.

The distinction is perhaps even clearer if we think of regeneration as initial sanctification. The same irreversible order applies to the relationship between justification and sanctification, as Wesley points out in Sermon 5, “Justification by Faith.” Justification is primarily a matter of being forgiven.

It is not being made actually just and righteous. This is sanctification; which is, indeed, in some degree the immediate fruit of justification; but nevertheless, is a distinct gift of God, and of a totally different nature. The one implies, what God ‘does for us’ through his Son; the other, what he ‘works in us’ by his Spirit.

Regeneration is the first moment of that sanctification, the instant when God (working in us by his Spirit) places holiness in us and makes a change to our actual state. A justified sinner is forgiven, but his character has not been changed by the act of justification (which God does for him through his Son). The regenerate person, however, has a character which has been changed by God’s intervention. He has been “made actually just and righteous,” at least in principle and as the beginning point of a process that, as it continues to develop, will be recognized outwardly as sanctification.

Justification is the imputing of righteousness to the believer, and regeneration is the implanting of righteousness into that same believer. Both happen at once, but they are different things. They belong together as the concerted actions of the one God, who “implants righteousness in every one to whom he has imputed it.” They belong together as the concerted action of God the Father, who takes action for us through his Son, and in us by his Spirit.

Evidences of the New Birth from Finally Alive

In Finally Alive (Piper, John. Finally Alive. Minneapolis: Desiring God, 2009), author John Piper offers a list of eleven evidences of our new birth:

Eleven Evidences of the New Birth

1. Those who are born of God keep his commandments.
1 John 2:3–4: “By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

2. Those who are born of God walk as Christ walked.
1 John 2:5–6: “By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”

3. Those who are born of God don’t hate others but love them.
1 John 2:9: “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.”

4. Those who are born of God don’t love the world.
1 John 2:15: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

5. Those who are born of God confess the Son and receive (have) him. 1 John 2:23: “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.”

6. Those who are born of God practice righteousness.
1 John 2:29: “If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.”

7. Those who are born of God don’t make a practice of sinning.
1 John 3:6: “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”

8. Those who are born of God possess the Spirit of God.
1 John 3:24: “By this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”

9. Those who are born of God listen submissively to the apostolic Word.
1 John 4:6: “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”

10. Those who are born of God believe that Jesus is the Christ.
1 John 5:1: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.”

11. Those who are born of God overcome the world.
1 John 5:4: “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” (125-28)

What does our deadness mean?

In Finally Alive (Piper, John. Finally Alive. Minneapolis: Desiring God, 2009), author John Piper offers a list of ten things that our 'deadness' (our unregenerated state) means:

"What does this mean? This deadness? There are at least ten answers in the New Testament. If we consider them honestly and prayerfully, they will humble us very deeply and cause us to be amazed at the gift of the new birth. So what I aim to do is to talk about seven of them in this chapter and three of them in the next chapter along with the larger question: Do we really need to be changed? Can’t we just be forgiven and justified? Wouldn’t that get us to heaven? Here are seven of the biblical explanations of our condition apart from the new birth and why it is so necessary." (48)

1. Apart from the new birth, we are dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1–2).
"We are dead in the sense that we cannot see or savor the glory of Christ. We are spiritually dead. We are unresponsive to God and Christ and this word.” (48-9)

2. Apart from the new birth, we are by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3).
"Not my deeds, and not my circumstances, and not the people in my life, but my nature is my deepest personal problem." (49)

3. Apart from the new birth, we love darkness and hate the light (John 3:19–20).
"We are not neutral when spiritual light approaches. We resist it. And we are not neutral when spiritual darkness envelops us. We embrace it. Love and hate are active in the unregenerate heart. And they move in exactly the wrong directions—hating what should be loved and loving what should be hated." (50)

4. Apart from the new birth, our hearts are hard like stone (Ezek. 36:26; Eph. 4:18).
"Our ignorance is guilty ignorance, not innocent ignorance. It is rooted in hard and resistant hearts. Paul says in Romans 1:18 that we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Ignorance is not our biggest problem. Hardness and resistance are. "(50)

5. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to submit to God or please God (Rom. 8:7–8).
"His point is that without the Holy Spirit, our minds are so resistant to God’s authority that we will not, and therefore cannot, submit to him." (51)

6. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to accept the gospel (Eph. 4:18; 1 Cor. 2:14).
"This rebellion is so complete that the heart really cannot receive the things of the Spirit. This is real inability. But it is not a coerced inability. The unregenerate person cannot because he will not. His preferences for sin are so strong that he cannot choose good. It is a real and terrible bondage. But it is not an innocent bondage." (52)

7. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to come to Christ or embrace him as Lord (John 6:44, 65; 1 Cor. 12:3).
"It is morally impossible for the dead, dark, hard, resistant heart to celebrate the Lordship of Jesus over his life without being born again." (52)

8. Apart from the new birth, we are slaves to sin (Rom. 6:17).
"Until God awakens us from spiritual death and gives us the life that finds joy in killing sin and being holy, we are slaves and cannot get free. That’s why the new birth is necessary." (57)

9. Apart from the new birth, we are slaves of Satan (Eph. 2:1–2; 2 Tim. 2:24–26).
"It’s what happens when a person in the dark fondles an ebony brooch hanging around his neck, and then the lights go on and he sees it’s not a brooch but a cockroach, and flings it away. That’s how people are set free from the devil. And until God does that miracle of new birth, we stay in bondage to the father of lies because we love to be able to tell ourselves whatever we please. We keep fondling smooth roaches and warm fuzzy tarantulas in the dark." (58)

10. Apart from the new birth, no good thing dwells in us (Rom. 7:18).
"Now this is a statement that is unintelligible to the unregenerate who know very well that they do many good things and that they could do much more evil than they do. The statement makes no sense—that there is no good in us before new birth—without the conviction that everything good that God has made and that God sustains is ruined when it is not done in reliance on God’s grace and in pursuit of God’s glory." (58)

"The aim in this list is to give us an accurate diagnosis of our disease so that when God applies the remedy at great cost to himself, we will leap for joy and give him some measure of the glory he deserves." (56)

Reading the Classics with Challies - Redemption Accomplished and Applied

One of the biggest hurdles I had with reformed theology in general, and Calvinism in particular, revolved around the fact that I wanted to participate in my own salvation. I was 'OK' with my role being minuscule and even secondary, but I wanted a part to play in my redemption and in my being 'born again'. I used to think that this desire was acceptable, intelligent, and even noble. As I look back on the years of wrestling with this concept, I realize that it was pride alone which fueled the need to believe that I was participating in a significant way in my regeneration. But now I can say, "Salvation is from the Lord." And I say it without reservation. However, not too long ago, a chapter like the one on Regeneration by Murray in Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Murray, John. Redemption Accomplished and Applied. Boston: Wm. B. Eerdmans Company, 1984)would have caused no small amount of consternation.

Murray brings this issue to the forefront in an interesting way. He begins by presenting a problem to the reader:

An effectual call, however, must carry along with it the appropriate response on the part of the person called. It is God who calls but it is not God who answers the call; it is the person to whom the call is addressed. And this response must enlist the exercise of the heart and mind and will of the person concerned. It is at this point that we are compelled to ask the question: how can a person who is dead in trespasses and sins, whose mind is enmity against God, and who cannot do that which is well-pleasing to God answer a call to the fellowship of Christ?...And how can a person whose heart is depraved and whose mind is enmity against God embrace him who is the supreme manifestation of the glory of God? (95)

Murray 'rolls up his sleeves' and begins the serious work with the answer to that question: "The answer to this question is that the believing and loving response which the calling requires is a moral and spiritual impossibility on the part of one who is dead in trespasses and sin." (95) Murray, in his style that I am beginning to appreciate more and more, makes his position clear stating, "The fact is that there is a complete incongruity between the glory and virtue to which sinners are called, on the one hand, and the moral and spiritual condition of the called, on the other." (95) Murray furthers the discussion with another question: "How is this incongruity to be resolved and the impossibility overcome?" (95)

The answer to this questions strikes at the heart of the dilemma I struggled with when I wanted to believe that I participated in a primary manner in my own salvation.

It is the glory of the gospel of God's grace that it provides for this incongruity. God's call, since it is effectual, carries with it the operative grace whereby the person called is enabled to answer the call and to embrace Jesus Christ as he is freely offered in the gospel. God's grace reaches down to the lowest depths of our need and meets all the exigencies of the moral and spiritual impossibility which inheres in our depravity and inability. And that grace is the grace of regeneration. (96)

Murray goes on, adding,

God effects a change which is radical and all-pervasive, a change which cannot be explained in terms of any combination, permutation, or accumulation of human resources, a change which is nothing less than a new creation by him who calls the things that be not as though they were, who spake and it was done, who commanded and it stood fast. This, in a word, is regeneration. (96)

This, in another word, is glorious. What once sounded to me ridiculous and ignorant, now sounds to me like God's wonderful and beautiful, logical and necessary, grace.

Murray goes on to sum up my sentiments nicely:

It has often been said that we are passive in regeneration. This is a true and proper statement. For it is simply the precipitate of what our Lord has taught us here. We may not like it. We mat recoil against it. It may not fit into our way of thinking and it may not accord with the time-worn expressions which are the coin of our evangelism. But if we recoil against it, we do well to remember that this recoil is recoil against Christ. And what shall we answer when we appear before him whose truth we rejected and with whose gospel we tampered? But blessed be God that the gospel of Christ is one of sovereign, efficacious, irresistible regeneration. If it were not the case that in regeneration we are passive, the subjects of an action of which God alone is the agent, there would be no gospel at all. For unless God by sovereign, operative grace had turned our enmity to love and our disbelief to faith we would never yield the response of faith and love. (99-100)

Regeneration

I am participating in a 'small group' studying the ordo salutis or, in English, the order of salvation. This week we are looking into regeneration. The doctrine of regeneration was one of the main 'arguments' that convinced me that reformed theology was in fact an accurate representation of the truth; at least more accurate than what I had believed before.

Our group's resources for this study are the mp3s of Scottsdale Bible Church's Christian Essentials class. These are lessons taught by Wayne Grudem in which he systematically, over the course of several years, works through his book entitled Systematic Theology. You can find the lesson on regeneration, delivered February 10th of 2008, at Scottsdale Bible Church's Christian Essentials website.

Early on in the lesson Grudem gives several examples from Scripture that refer to regeneration:

• a new heart - Ezekiel 36:26-27, And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
• born of God - John 1:12-13, But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
• made alive with Christ - Ephesians 2:4-5, ButGod, 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
• brought forth - James 1:18, Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
• born again - 1 Peter 1:3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
• born of the Spirit - John 3:5-8, Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind 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.”