REGENERATION

What is Regeneration?

Growing up this was a word I don’t recall hearing from the pulpit.  It could be one I may have missed, but for the most part, “born again” was used in place of regeneration.

The word “regeneration” appears only twice in the NT - Matthew 19:28 and Titus 3:5 - and the word used in the original Greek is “palingenesia”.  This word is used in two different ways:  In Matthew, it’s used in reference to how the earth will be regenerated when Christ returns to sit upon His Throne to reign upon the new earth.  In Titus, it’s used in reference to what happens to an individual when the Holy Spirit does His work in their life to bring them to salvation.  But, for the most part, it means pretty much the same thing.

So what is the definition of regeneration?

It’s “new birth, reproduction, renewal, re-creation…..hence renovation, the production of a new life consecrated to God, a radical change of the mind for the better.  The word is often used to denote restoration of a thing to its pristine state, its renovation, as a renewal or restoration of life from death.”

In this article the author states this about regeneration: “Regeneration occurs when God sovereignly acknowledges a person's belief in the gospel.”

Sounds good, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not correct.  Scripture teaches we are born, spiritually speaking, dead in our trespasses and sins.  We know a dead person cannot respond to anything.  Pastor John MacArthur gave an illustration of how a woman who lived a few blocks away from Grace Community Church called the church crying because her little baby died.  Pastor John went to her home and found her holding the lifeless body of her baby..  He mentioned how the mother was holding her child, hugging him/her, kissing his/her face, but the baby was already blue and gave no kind of response to the mother’s loving gestures.

It’s the same with us spiritually.  We can’t respond to anything because there’s no spiritual life within us.  God must first regenerate us before we can respond to the gospel.  Believing the gospel is not possible until we are first brought to life spiritually.

“But people can still reject the gospel,” some may say.

No, they can’t.  Why?  Because in the same instant God regenerates us, He also gifts us with a new heart and the faith to believe.  In that moment, we are made aware of our sinful nature, and that’s when we know we must surrender to Him as Savior and Lord. There are so many processes that occur at regeneration, but everything we need for salvation is given to us in that instantaneous moment.

Biologists have only recently been able to capture the moment a human sperm and egg unite in the process of conception and at that moment, there's a spark of light (see here).  At that very instant, new life begins.  It’s the same with us spiritually.  I’m not saying there’s a spark of light.  I’m saying it’s so quick and instantaneous, we can’t really pinpoint when it happens, but we can know that, just like Paul, we went from death to life; unbelieving to believing; from desiring worldly passions to desiring the things of God; from loving sin to detesting sin.  Many say they can’t pick out the very moment they came to believe, they just know everything changed.

That, my friends, is regeneration.  That is going from death to life and ONLY God can bring life to a spiritually dead person.