The Doctrine of Regeneration

My assignment is to address the doctrine of regeneration. It's incredibly important. It's also controversial. It's difficult for us to understand. You get so many questions about this particular doctrine, this idea of being born again. Literally what it means is to be born again. Part of the difficulty stems from the way that that terminology came into the common vernacular. A lot of people are credited to Jimmy Carter, of all people, former President of the United States, who just died last year at the age of one hundred. By the way, and Jimmy Carter referred to himself as a born again Christian. Wasn't really a popular thing before then to talk about being born again Christian. The idea behind that terminology for him and people who were using it was that there are a lot of people who claim the mantle of Christian and for most of them, for many of them, if not most of them, what they mean is culturally, historically, I'm part of a Christian family, Christian tradition, Christian culture, and before it sort of fell out of favor recently, Christian nation. People would have understood this for most of history, that there are some nations that are Muslim, there are some nations that are you know, Buddhists, and there are some nations that are Christian. The idea of a secular nation is a very new it's a very novel concept. And so you had many people who, because of their national origin or because of their family heritage, would have identified as Christian. Or there are people who would have said, you know, we live in a culture where there are many different religions. I'm not this one, I'm not that one. I'm not that one, so I'm this one. So the idea of born again Christian was really an attempt to distinguish between people who were practicing cultural Christianity and people who were authentically regenerate, who had genuinely come to God through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's using this biblical language of being born again. Well inter sort of the revival movement, people like Billy Sunday and Billy Graham and others, and the cry is you must be born again. And that led to even more confusion because in the Revivalist movement, which is you know, kind of led up to this popularity of Jimmy Carter and others, and in the Revivalist movement, the idea of being born again was something that you did. You need to be born again right here, right now, in this meeting. You need to be born again. How do you do that? Raise your hand, walk up to the front, repeat after me. Do these things to be born again? And that led to even more confusion over the issue. Well, so as a result of that, people are often asking questions about this. I know I'm supposed to be born again, but is me being born again something that God does or is it something that I do? Is me being born again something that I can measure, something that I can test? What is it? Well? In order to answer these questions, I want us to go to the one who gives us this terminology, the apostle John, and I want to read from his gospel. But then I want to get to his epistle. So we're going to look at John chapter three and then first John chapter five, John chapter three, just to sort of set the stage for us with the terminology. John chapter three, beginning of verse one, Now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher. Come from God. For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, there it is, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Unless you're born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God. By the way, that's our first clue, right, Remember the questions that come, is this something that I do? Or is this something that God does? Well? If you can't even see the kingdom without being born again, trilling, not something that you did, amen, somebody, right, it's probably not something that you did. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Now? Oftentimes if you'll read that, and they feel like Nicodemus is being facetious, right, But no, he's legitimately asking the question. You're talking about being born, what do you mean by that? How does that work? Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. So first we can't see the Kingdom of God, and now we cannot enter the Kingdom of God. We also get more meat on the bones. Born of water and the spirit. Well, what does this mean? He answers that in the next verse. A lot of people try to make that a whole lot of different things is right, but he answers it in the next verse, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Well, because he says that in verse six, then we understand that born of water refers to being born of the flesh. Physical birth, physical birth. Right, anybody ever been there when her water broke? It's a thing, man, It changes everything, right, I mean, when that happens, it's like, it's okay, it's on. Other things can go on, and it's like, are we closed? Are we there? You know? I'm not sure. I think no, I think we're okay, right, But when the water breaks, So physical birth and spiritual birth. Being born again is about this spiritual birth. Verse seven, Do not marvel that I said to you you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it 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. So there's Jesus teaching on it. Now. Want us to look at what John tells us in his epistle where he puts more meat on the bones. And when he puts the meat on the bones, what he does is he doesn't give us a how to on being born again. You don't need a how to on being born again, just like you didn't need a how to on being born the first time. Amen. Here's what we don't do. We don't have conferences where we bring pregnant women and put probes on them so that we can instruct their children as to what to do next. Amen. They just they It just happens. There does not need to be any instruction. It just happens. Even for the woman and giving birth to the child. God has just designed it in such a way that that baby's gonna come. Amen. You can stop him if you want it to. So John's not giving us instructions on how to be born again. But what he's doing here in First John is he's giving us a picture of what it looks like when you have been born again, when that has taken place, And he does it in the context of confronting the principal error of his day, and that is the error of gnosticism. He does some of that in his Gospel, but he does it very clearly here in this epistle and the Gnostics. You have to understand a little bit about who they are in order to understand what John is doing in his epistle the Gnostics. That word comes from the word gnosis, or knowledge. So gnosticism is about the idea of having special knowledge. It is about the idea of having this sort of supernatural intuition, if you will. Gnosticism is also about immediacy. Now by immediacy, I don't mean like fast, like right now, I mean without mediation. Gnosticism is about getting information directly from God, without a mediator. I have a word from the Lord. Anybody heard anything like that. There are gnostics among us today. We don't need the scriptures, we don't need anything. We just have this immediate knowledge that can override the scriptures. Even the Lord told me it happens all the time, and when we talk about it, just so flippantly, right. And then I said, and you know, and the Lord said to me, and I said, wait, Lord, what the Lord does not. I mean, I hear these things, and they don't mean what they're saying, because if these people actually heard the voice of God, they would fall out like dead men. They didn't, So when people are talking about the Lord told me and the Lord said to me, they don't literally mean that the Lord told them or the Lord said to them. Otherwise their Bibles would be spiral bound and not leather bound, because that kind of revelation has the same authority as scripture. That's gnosticism. There's another side to gnosticism, and that has to do with the idea of the spirit and the flesh to stick. The spiritual world and the material world are incongruent with one another. God wouldn't God wouldn't touch this material world. He's above the material world. Well, the Gnostics then have some serious problems the hypostatic union. For example, that Jesus is fully God and fully manned. It's a huge problem for the gnostics, and the Gnostics got around the ministry of Jesus this way two different schools of thought. One group of Gnostics believe that Jesus was not actually in the flesh, He just appeared to be in the flesh. So when he walked, he wouldn't have left footprints. He was really a spiritual being and only appeared to be a physical being by the way, John obliterates this in his Gospel. Have you ever wondered why it's important to write about Jesus eating fish with the disciples? Why is that important if you're confronting gnostics. It makes all the sense in the world that he hungers, that he thirsts, that he gets tired, and that he actually eats. That obliterates the gnostic argument. Well, there's another group of gnostics who argue that essentially, there's Jesus and then there's the Christ. Jesus is a man. He's a physical man who lives a physical life in this physical world. But at his baptism, the God part of him joined the physical part of him, and then on the cross, when he cries out, the God part of him departs from the physical part of him. Same idea, same idea, This problem with the material and the immaterial. So when we read First John, it's important to keep this in mind because there are a lot of people who have huge problems with First John. There's a lot of legalism and moralism that comes out of a misunderstanding of First John. And by the way, this cuts two ways. I love the book of First John because it gets that number one. Those people who argue, I'm spiritual but not religious. We heard this the other day from doctor Jonas these people who say I'm spiritual but I'm not religious. On the one side, John cuts them down. But he also cuts down the people who are religious but not spiritual, those people who are just outward in their adherents and not inward. So look at with me verse John chapter five. First, I want you to see what John is doing here in John chapter in the Gospel of John chapter twenty, verses thirty and thirty one, these very familiar words. You don't have to turn there, but listen to you or remember these words. Now, Jesus did many other signs and the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. So John says, they're in his gospel. There are a lot more things that I could have written. And he writes his gospel around seven signs, very important number, and he says, I wrote these things, and not other things. But I wrote these so that so that you might believe, that you might know that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing you might have life in Him, you might be saved through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, he does the same thing in first John one John five. Look at verse thirteen. I write these things to you who believe. I wrote my gospel so that you could believe. I write this epistle to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. That's the goal here, because the Gnostics were causing all kinds of confusion. They were tearing the church apart with their ideology, and John is addressing it head on. Well, let's look at Chapter five, beginning of verse one four things. I'll give you those four things, and then what we'll do is we'll trace them in this epistle. The first, those who are born again believe the gospel rightly. They believe the gospel rightly. Secondly, those who are born again love the brethren. They love the brethren. Thirdly, those who are born again obey gladly. And finally, those who were born again overcome the world. Those are the poor things. Believe the Gospel, love the brethren, obeg gladly, and overcome the world. Now here's the problem with the way that we read first John. Just like gnosticism was the big foe in John's day and it still is to a certain extent, Gnosticism is a big foe, there was another big foe in John's day and in ours, and that is legalism and moralism. Legalism says I can be right with God by doing the right thing. That's all. God just wants me to do the right thing. And if I will do the right thing, if I will just tick off the right boxes, then I will be right with God. Moralism very similarly says Jesus is our example. He came to show us what right living looks like. And so ultimately what God wants of us for us from us is for us to model our lives after Jesus. What would Jesus do? Remember those days and everybody wore the little bracelets. That's the height of moralism. Just whenever you face something in your life, just ask yourself, what would Jesus do? Well? The answer is he would take on our sin. As we just heard nail it to the cross. Amen. So let's look at these four things first. One John five, verse one. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. You believe rightly. Now, in order to do this again, we have to see it in the context of John's epistle. We have to understand what he's doing and who he's doing it for in order to get what that means. And in order to get this it goes all the way back to the beginning of the epistle. In the introduction, Chapter one, verse one, he starts that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, with which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands. Concerning the Word of life, the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and we testify to it and proclaim to you, the eternal life which was with the Father and has been made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you two may have fellowship with us. And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his son. By the way, that is incredibly important for John. You have fellowship with us and our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son. He's talking about our union and communion with the Godhead and with one another. This is hugely important in light of gnosticism. So write knowledge about who Jesus is leads us into that. Go now to chapter two, Chapter two, beginning of verse twenty and verse nineteen. We gotta look at nineteen. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they are not of us. We'll come back to this later. One of the most important verses in First John now verse twenty. But you have been anointed by the Holy One. You you all have knowledge. Remember, gnosticism is about what this secret knowledge. The Gnostics are putting themselves up as those who have this secret knowledge. They're teaching a version of Christianity that is not aligned with Apostolic truth, and their excuse for doing it is this immediate knowledge that they have, so they're not tethered to Apostolic teaching. John says, you've been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. Don't let them make you think that they have some special knowledge you don't have access to. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it. And because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father. Also four verse one, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but tests the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world. Inf that he says in chapter five, verse one, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Contextually, we believe the Gospel, and we believe the Gospel rightly. If you understand that he's talking about the Gnostics, then you see that what he's doing is he's taking the error of his day and he's saying, those who have been born again are not beholden to the error of our day. They believe what God has revealed about his son Jesus Christ. Now, when you understand that, you can apply it in every time, in every age, and in every culture, whatever the opposition is in our day. What John is saying is those who have been born again reject that and hold to this. Those who have been born again are not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. But they believe what has been revealed in God's word about himself. They believe the Gospel as it has been proclaimed about the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is much opposition to that at every point. Our culture does not like a Jesus who hates sin, and so our temptation is to adopt a Jesus that does not hate sin. And there are many people who are doing it. That's our gnostic heresy today. Our gnostic heresy today is the so called priest or usually priestess, who stands in her priestly robes with her rainbow colors and proclaim that whoever her God is, that that God is a God of inclusion, and the world loves her. The world loves her. Has it not been amazing? In recent days? These people can be standing up before and usually they are. Usually they're standing up before an empty house, ten twelve people in front of them in a big cathedral from a mainline denomination, proclaiming these things that everybody knows is a lie. But the world is just happy to see someone in priestly vestments saying what they long to hear. What John is saying here is those who have truly been born again do not allow this to sway them, but they believe what God has revealed in his word about his son. Have you been born again? Do you believe the Gospel? Or you swayed by the spirit of the age. The spirit of the age that says that penal substitutionary atonement is essentially cosmic child abuse. This is essentially the Anglican position. It's cosmic child abuse. We're too sophisticated for that, and so we have to explain those things away. What John is saying here is no, we reject that, and when we've been born again, we believe what God has revealed about himself. The second thing, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. That's the second thing that John makes clear throughout his epistle that one of the pieces of evidence is that we love the brethren, for example. And there are so many of these, But for the sake of time, let's just look at a couple of things. Chapter four, Verse seven. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God. Because God is love. And this the love of God, was made manifest among us. That God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. We just heard that loved. If God's soul loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. Look down at verse eighteen. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We loved because He first loved us. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And John said seventeen in Jesus High priestly prayer, that truly is the Lord's prayer. John seventeen. He prays that the Father will make us one, just as he and the Father are one, just as just as the God of the universe has existed throughout all eternity in perfect oneness, perfect triune oneness, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit eternally united to one another. That the love of God spills out in redemption, and that the Father, out of his love for the son, bequeaths a people to the Son, and the Son, out of love for the Father, dies to redeem the people whom the Father has bequeathed to him. And the Spirit, who is the personification of the love between the Father and the Son, actually applies that love between the Father and the Son to those whom the Father gave and the Son died to redeem, so that those may be intertwined in this love relationship. That the triune God has expressed throughout all the ages through redemption. If that's true, then that means I am as united to you as I am to Christ, because we are members of His body, which means we are members of one another. Again, this cuts to the heart of gnosticism. Not only is Jesus the god Man, which is utterly offensive to the gnostic. Not only is Jesus the god Man, which means that the material is united to the immaterial Amen, but also we are His children. Look again at five to one. Don't miss the language. He says. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By the way John puts this throughout his Gospel or throughout his epistle, I want you to see this a number of times. Go with me if you will, to chapter two, verse one, My Little Children, Chapter two, verse twelve. I'm writing to you, little children. Chapter two, verse thirteen. I write to you children, Chapter two verse eighteen. Children, it is the last hour Chapter two verse twenty eight. And now little children Chapter three verse seven, Little Children. Chapter four verse one, Little Children. And then chapter five verse twenty one. At the end of his epistle, he says, little children, keep yourselves from idols, over and over and over again. Whose children God's children? You know, one of the travesties of our day, of our era is the forgotten piece of the order salutis. The order salutis is the order of salvation. You ask ten Christians what the order salutis is. In fact, you ask ninety nine Christians what the order salute? This is ninety nine who know the term, or one hundred who know the term. One hundred Christians who know the term, what's the order salutis? And they will tell you justification, sanctification, glorification. Ninety nine of one hundred will tell you that with absolute confidence, the order salutis is justification, sanctification, glorification. You ask all of the Reformed Confessions what the order salutis is, and it's not three but four. Justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification. We are justified, and we are adopted. We are adopted into the family of God. Listen, this is this is huge, especially to me. I'm an adoptive father, and one of the things as an adoptive father, I deal with this all the time with people. I used to be a lot more gracious than I am now. Amen. I was more gracious then, but now I'm more sanctified, and so I'm less gracious. And the reason that I'm less gracious is because I want to help people understand this doctrine. And so people learn that I'm an adoptive father, and they'll say things like, oh, okay, well I've heard that you were adopted. You know, an adoptive father, and so which one are your own children? All of them? All of them are my own children. I double dog dare you to mess with one? Which ones are your real children? All of them are my real children. Every last one of them is my real child. They're my own children. They're my real children. And we ask that question because we were gnostics, and as gnostics, we believe that somehow love for children is inherently tied I'm sorry, the light in my face, please, is inherently tied to the police. Please see that. Somehow it's inherently tied to the biological process of giving birth. And so here's what people are asking, right, I understand that some of your children came through your wife's womb, and we know that we can love the children who come through the womb because right as gnostic evolutionists, we believe that love is tied to biology. So these children are not yours biologically. So how do you explain to my evolutionary worldview that you can love these children as love as you as well as you love the children who you obviously love because of biology. That's the question. Then I mess them up. See, you know what's interesting about your question. You don't ask me that question about the person whom I love more than anyone else in the world. You don't ask me that question about the person who is my closest living relative but not related to me by blood. That's my wife. We are not connected by blood, yet she's my closest living relative, and I love her more than anybody. If you think that there is a distinction between a parent's ability to love a biological child and a parent's ability to love a child who is theirs by adoption, then you don't understand your salvation. Because you are God's adopted child. You're his real child, You're his own child, and he loves you as much as he loved Jesus because you are in him. That's why we love the brethren, because when we've been born again, we've been born into the family of God. And when we're born into the family of God, we love God's family. The gnostic doesn't get this, nor does the modern legalist or moralist. The modern legalist or moralist is trying to please God through his or her outward behavior and is never secure, always doubting and questioning their salvation because inwardly we know that there is nothing that we could do to earn God's love. But to those who are born again supernaturally, we believe the Gospel and we love the brethren. Thirdly, oh Wow, we keep his commands joyfully, we obey joyfully. By this, we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and obey his commandments. This next verse is important to put in there, for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and the commandments are not burdensome. We delight to keep his commandments because we're His children. Because we've been born again. We delight to cling to our Father, just like we delight to cling to our earthly parents. We delight to please our heavenly Father like we delight in pleasing our earthly parents. It's not so when we're going through the motions. It's not so in legalism and moralism. Legalism and moralism are drudgery. Legalism and moralism are always looking for loopholes. Legalism and moralism are always trying to find that balance between doing what our flesh really wants and being able to tick the boxes. How much can I get away with, how far can I go? Not so for those who are born again. Not so for those who actually belong to God, whose minds have been changed and they believe the gospel, whose attitudes have been changed, and they love the brethren, and whose desires have been changed so that they joyfully obey. Listen to this chapter three, beginning of verse four, And this is what trips people up oftentimes. In this book. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him by the way. One of the reasons that gnosticism was so pernicious is because for the gnostic, because of this distinction between the material and the immaterial. For many of them, they thought it didn't matter what they did with their bodies, just this special knowledge. There's this higher plane, and then there's my body. Doesn't really matter what I do with my body. Verse seven, Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil. For the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning. Notice how he says practice over and over again. For God seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God? And who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God. Nor is the one who does does not love his brother. There's a connection of the two. What do you practice? What do you practice? By the way people read that, and all of a sudden, what we want to do is we want to take away Well, you have to keep the law perfectly. Well. Hello, Pharisee, What do you practice? What characterizes you? Here's another way to put it. What are you satisfied with? People often come and it's pastor kidding. I just I'm just having these doubts. Why are you having these doubts? Well, because there are these I keep struggling with this sin, and can I really be saved if I keep struggling with this sin. I'm gonna pray for you, But I'm not gonna pray for you because I'm worried about you, because I'd be worried about you if you weren't struggling. I'd be worried about you, if you were justified, if you were practicing this lifestyle and had absolutely no problem with it. But the fact that this pricks your conscience, the fact that you don't want this, the fact that your desire is to live another way, says something about what God has done in your life. My time is gone, and I apologize. But the last one, the last one verse four. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God. This takes us back to that famous statement of his in chapter two. I'll read this and then close verse twenty one of chapter two. I write to you not because oh I'm sorry that one I see time has gotten away from me. Go to chapter two, verse fifteen. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life is not from the Father, but from the world. By the way, the world here is that world that is opposed to God. Doesn't mean that the cosmos, the physical universe. It doesn't mean all the people in the universe. This term he's using it here to refer to all that which opposes the Kingdom. The world is passing away, along with its desires. But if whoever does the Word of God abides forever, the children of God overcome the world. They believe the Gospel rightly, and they're justified. God justified because they believe the Gospel rightly. They love the brethren because not only are they justified, they're adopted. They obey gladly, because not only are they justified and adopted, but they're sanctified, and eventually they overcome the world, not in the here and the now, but in the age that is to come. Why did they overcome the world? When do they overcome the world when they're glorified? Those who've been born again be justified by faith, adopted, sanctified progressively over time, and ultimately and eventually glorified. We have been freed from the penalty of sin. We are being freed from the power of sin, and one day, by God's grace, we will most assuredly be freed from the very presence of sin and all of that because we've been born again as a supernatural work of God by his sovereign grace. Alone am