Chapter I: The Nature of Regeneration

Too often do we find other things substituted by man for God's appointed means of entrance into the kingdom of heaven. It will be well for us then to look, first of all, at some of these substitutes.

1. REGENERATION IS NOT BAPTISM.

It is claimed that John 3:5--"Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit," and Titus 3:5--"The washing of regeneration," teach that regeneration may occur in connection with baptism. These passages, however, are to be understood in a figurative sense, as meaning the cleansing power of the Word of God. See also Eph. 5:26--"With the washing of water by (or in) the word"; John 15:3--"Clean through the word." That the Word of God is an agent in regeneration is clear from James 1:18, and 1 Pet. 1:23.

If baptism and regeneration were identical, why should the Apostle Paul seem to make so little of that rite (1 Cor. 4:15, and compare with it 1 Cor. 1:14)? In the first passage Paul asserts that he had _begotten_ them through the Gospel; and in 1:14 he declares that he _baptized none of them_ save Crispus and Gaius. Could he thus speak of baptism if it had been the means through which they had been begotten again? Simon Magus was baptized (Acts 8), but was he saved? Cornelius (Acts 11) was saved even before he was baptized.

2. REFORMATION IS NOT REGENERATION.

Regeneration is not a natural forward step in man's development; it is a supernatural act of God; it is a spiritual crisis. It is not evolution, but involution--the communication of a new life. It is a revolution--a change of direction resulting from that life. Herein lies the danger in psychology, and in the statistics regarding the number of conversions during the period of adolescence. The danger lies in the tendency to make regeneration a natural phenomenon, an advanced step in the development of a human life, instead of regarding it as a crisis. Such a psychological view of regeneration denies man's sin, his need of Christ, the necessity of an atonement, and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

3. REGENERATION IS A SPIRITUAL QUICKENING, A NEW BIRTH.

Regeneration is the impartation of a new and divine life; a new creation; the production of a new thing. It is Gen. 1:26 over again. It is not the old nature altered, reformed, or re-invigorated, but a new birth from above. This is the teaching of such passages as John 3:3-7; 5:21; Eph. 2:1, 10; 2 Cor. 5:17.

By nature man is dead in sin (Eph. 2:1); the new birth imparts to him new life--the life of God, so that henceforth he is as those that are alive from the dead; he has passed out of death into life (John 5:24).

4. IT IS THE IMPARTATION OF A NEW NATURE--GOD'S NATURE.

In regeneration we are made partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). We have put on the new man, which after God is created in holiness and righteousness (Eph. 4:11; Col. 3:10). Christ now lives in the believer (Gal. 2:20). God's seed now abides in him (1 John 3:9). So that henceforth the believer is possessed of two natures (Gal. 5:17).

5. A NEW AND DIVINE IMPULSE IS GIVEN TO THE BELIEVER.

Thus regeneration is a crisis with a view to a process. A new governing power comes into the regenerate man's life by which he is enabled to become holy in experience: "Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17). See also Acts 16:14, and Ezek. 36:25-27, 1 John 3:6-9.