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| And I will give you a new heart...(Ezek. 36:26). |
Regeneration is:
a. a 2010 documentary film that I haven’t seen and you haven’t eitherb. a Roy Orbison album from the 70’s
c. the wonderful work of God to impart spiritual life to sinners and bring them to Christ
I bet you picked “c”! And for this blog, that is definitely the right answer.
Salvation is a big general idea that speaks of how Christ transforms hell-bound sinners into heaven-bound saints. But there are a whole constellation of words that describe this gift of His grace. One of them is “regeneration.”
I’ll quote Wayne Grudem:
Regeneration is a secret act of God in which he imparts new spiritual life to us. This is sometimes called “being born again” (using language from John 3:3-8)…in the work of regeneration we play no active role at all. It is instead totally a work of God. We see this, for example, when John talks about those to whom Christ gave power to become children of God—they “were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Here John specifies that children of God are those who are “born…of God” and our human will (“the will of man”) does not bring about this kind of birth. (p. 699).
Here’s J.I. Packer:
The concept is of God renovating the heart, the core of a person’s being, by implanting a new principle of desire, purpose, and action, a dispositional dynamic that finds expression in positive response to the gospel and its Christ (Concise Theology, p. 157).
One more from Grudem:
…it is natural to understand that regeneration comes before saving faith. It is in fact this work of God that gives us the spiritual ability to respond to God in faith…The idea that regeneration comes before saving faith is not always understood by evangelicals today. Sometimes people will even say something like, “If you believe in Christ as your Savior, then (after you believe) you will be born again.” But Scripture itself never says anything like that. This new birth is viewed by Scripture as something that God does within us in order to enable us to believe (pp. 702-703).
Regeneration means a spiritual resurrection takes place. A person dead to God is made alive, and then runs in faith and repentance to the Savior.
