With this lesson, we come to the first of five subjective aspects of God’s full salvation—regeneration. Regeneration means that in addition to the life we received at our birth, we receive another life, the life of God. This is what the Bible means when it speaks of being “born again” or “born anew.” Regeneration is the center of our salvation experience. It is the beginning point of our life relationship with God.
God’s intention is to have a group of people filled with Himself as their life that they may express Him in His image and represent Him with His authority. Adam’s disobedience caused him to fall into sin and to lose this birthright. Christ’s death took care of all of man’s problems before God. It enabled God to redeem, forgive, cleanse and justify man according to His own righteousness, not simply because He loved man. Now we have been brought back fully to God. Until man contains God as life in order to express Him, neither God nor man can be satisfied.
The next step God takes in His full salvation is to enter into man to put His life into him. This is the most crucial step. Even if man were completely forgiven and reconciled, he still could not express God without receiving His life.
In John 3, Jesus spoke to a good man named Nicodemus. He was a very wise and moral man, but the Lord Jesus told him that he needed to be born of water and of the Spirit. In his behavior and living Nicodemus was a moral man, but in God’s eyes, he had the satanic life and nature. Because of this, he needed to be born of water. Jesus was speaking of the water of baptism. In the Bible, baptism means termination. Termination ends our sinful and natural life. The satanic life and nature which Nicodemus had received from the fall in Adam had to be terminated. Then, the life of God, which has come from the life-giving Spirit in Christ’s resurrection, could be germinated in him.
To be a Christian is not a matter of being improved. To be a Christian is to be born of God, which means that in addition to our human life, we receive God’s life. Because we were all born in sin, we are all sinners. How can a sinner stop sinning? It is not possible. How can you tell a dog to stop barking and to start meowing? What you do is governed by your life. Even though you are forgiven by God for your sins, your sinful nature will cause you to sin again. What you need is another life, a sinless life. The only life that is without sin is God’s life. Regeneration brings this life into you. This is the life that Adam gave up when he turned from the tree of life to the tree of knowledge. Now, by believing into Christ, we can be born of God and receive Him as life. Praise the Lord!
After receiving God’s life, the satanic nature within man is gradually swallowed up. Sinful, lowly men like us can now grow in God’s life to become the sons of God to express Him.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 tells us that at regeneration, we receive three wonderful things. First, we receive a “new heart,” a “heart of flesh,” to replace our old “stony heart.” By experiencing the love of God in grace, our old heart, which formerly was cold and hard toward the Lord, is softened to love and desire Him. Second, we receive a “new spirit.” This is our old, deadened spirit renewed and enlivened by the life-giving Spirit. Now, our spirit is alive and can fully function to contact God’s Spirit and to enjoy His full salvation. Third, we receive the Spirit of God Himself to come to indwell us. What a wonderful salvation we receive through believing in the Lord! Regeneration is the center and beginning of this salvation.