We may talk about regeneration without realizing that in regeneration we have been given the divine life. The main work the Spirit does in regeneration is to impart the divine life, the eternal, uncreated life of God, into us. This means that the Spirit gives life to the believers.
Although Christ is life, it is difficult for Christ to give you life. It is the Spirit who gives life. Christ is life, but it is the Spirit who gives us Christ as life. Apart from the Spirit Christ may be life, but Christ as life cannot be given to us. By being the Spirit Christ is imparted into us as life. Today, after being processed, Christ is the life-giving Spirit. Now in our spirit we may enjoy this wonderful Spirit as the Spirit who gives us the divine life. Second Corinthians 3:6c and John 6:63 both reveal that the Spirit gives us life. Second Corinthians 3:6c says, “The Spirit gives life.” The Spirit, who is the ultimate expression of the processed Triune God becoming a life-giving Spirit, imparts the divine life, even God Himself into the believers. In John 6:63 the Lord Jesus Himself declares, “It is the Spirit who gives life.” After resurrection and through resurrection the Lord Jesus, who had become flesh (John 1:14), became the Spirit who gives life, as is clearly mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:45. It is as the life-giving Spirit that He can be the life and life supply to us. When we receive Him as the crucified and resurrected Savior, the Spirit who gives life comes into us to impart eternal life to us.
As believers we are persons with the divine life in us. We have received another life-eternal life-in addition to our human life. Now we need to learn to live not by the human life but by the divine life in the human life. This is not to live an exchanged life, the divine life exchanged for the human life; it is to live a mingled life, the divine life mingled with the human life. Now that we have two lives, we should not live in our human life apart from the divine life. On the contrary, we should live by the divine life in the human life. The giving of this divine life is a work done by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit also works to save us by renewing us (Titus 3:5). In ourselves we are the old creation. As the old creation, we are old not only in appearance but also in nature. We are intrinsically old. We are old in every way, old both inwardly and outwardly. Because we are the old creation, we need not only regeneration but also the renewing of the Spirit that follows regeneration. After we have been regenerated, we need to be renewed little by little. Daily we should cooperate with the renewing work of the Spirit so that the process of His renewing within us may be speeded up.
Titus 3:5 says, “According to His mercy, He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” Here we see that God’s salvation is through a certain action: the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. In Greek the word for regeneration in verse 5 is different from that for born again (1 Pet. 1:23). The only place this word is used is in Matthew 19:28 for the restoration of the millennium. Here it refers to a change from one state of things to another. To be born again is the beginning of this change. The washing of regeneration begins with our being born again and continues with the renewing of the Holy Spirit as the process of God’s new creation to make us a new man. It is a kind of reconditioning, remaking, remodeling, with life. Baptism (Rom. 6:3-5), the putting off of the old man, the putting on of the new man (Eph. 4:22, 24; Col. 3:9-11), and transformation by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:23) are all related to this wonderful process. The washing of regeneration purges away all the things of the old nature of our old man, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit imparts something new-the divine essence of the new man-into our being. In this is a passage from the old state we were in into a wholly new one, from the old creation into the status of a new creation. Hence, both the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit are a continual working in us throughout our whole life until the completion of the new creation.
The Holy Spirit is the divine Person, washing and renewing us in the divine element to make us a new creation with the divine nature to be heirs of God in His eternal life, inheriting all the riches of the Triune God. The Spirit began to renew us from our regeneration and is renewing us continuously every day and all day to make us a new creation with the divine life.
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