The Evidences of Regeneration
By John Fast
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” – 2 Timothy 3:1
Faithful stewards of God’s word have been called to serve the cause of Christ in a dangerous season. It is a time when, for the most part, sound doctrine is not tolerated, much less desired, by the mass of professing Christians. The law of God is ignored, and devotion to Scripture and to the historic doctrines of Christianity are in eclipse. Future generations of Christians will no doubt remember the twentieth century as an age in which sound doctrine and Christianity, life and holiness, salvation and regeneration, parted company, except in the testimony of a faithful few. And the first quarter of the twenty-first century may be remembered as a time in which a growing number of those once faithful few, in the name of relevance and in the face of mounting pressure from the culture, compromised and defected from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Jesus painted a dark picture of His generation, characterizing it as “evil and adulterous” (Mt 12:39), “adulterous and sinful” (Mk 8:38), and “a wicked generation” (Lk 11:29), even though there were a handful who were fully devoted to Him. This generation cannot escape the same indictment.
Anyone who has the least amount of spiritual discernment cannot help but be only too painfully aware that the apostasy within modern professing Christianity that makes the times in which we live so very dangerous is not only from basic tenets and key doctrines of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, but from the fundamental norms of Christian life and practice. It would be a daunting task to try and identify all the changes that have contributed to this ongoing revolt against Christian standards of morality and behavior, for which the only alternative are pagan standards of morality and behavior. One thing we can say with certainty, however, and that is no factor bears more of the blame than the failure on the part of Christian leaders to maintain the importance and holiness of the moral law of God as the norm which regulates the Christian life, and along with this the failure to appreciate the relationship between law and love in the life of faith. Whenever law and love are set against each other as incompatible, and love is represented as a self-directing, self-instructing, and self-regulating principle, then the foundation is laid for all that confronts us today in the way of false love, false gospels, false perceptions of what it is to be a Christian, as well as the rapid and monumental abandonment of basic Christian principles that allow us to draw a clear distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, moral and immoral, Christian and unchristian. This idolatry of “love” has become the new national religion.
One of the more obvious examples of this departure from basic Christian ethics is the now widespread acceptance of women to the special office of the ministry, either as pastors, elders, or in some other leadership role or through some form of parachurch ministry. In this is a clear rejection of the line of demarcation between the roles ordained by God for men and women, and between the general office of all believers and the special office of the ministry of the Word. This rejection of God’s ordained gender roles has degraded, not elevated the position of women in both church and society. There is not only abundant opportunity, but an indispensable place for the work of women in witnessing to the faith. It is in their God-ordained sphere that women properly and necessarily perform their most effective service in the spread of the gospel and their most effective witness to the Bible’s unchanging authority (Tit 2:3-5; 1 Tm 2:9-15; 1 Pt 3:1-6). This is particularly true when it comes to witnessing to other women. Here are opportunities for evangelism that are seldom open to men. No less a theologian than Archibald Alexander, the first, and for a time the sole instructor of Princeton Theological Seminary, once wrote,
“I have often heard pious females complain that they had little or nothing in their power, and they felt as if they were almost useless members of society. This is an egregious miscalculation. Their influence is silent and spreads imperceptibly, but it is real and effective. Piety is like light which cannot be hid. The more it seeks concealment, and retires from public notice, the more brightly it shines. Female influence only ceases, or operates unfavorably, when women depart from their own proper sphere; or when they endeavor to obtrude themselves upon the notice and admiration of the public.”[1]
If women were more attentive to their opportunities and responsibilities in this realm of personal witness and instruction, and less concerned with usurping responsibilities not given to them, not only would there be no demand on their part to occupy the special office, but there would be revulsion from even the thought. Today this rebellion against God’s created order has reached the point that for someone to insist that God created people male and female now exposes them not only to public criticism but to personal ruin. Despite current disturbing trends to the contrary, gender is not a matter of personal preference, and neither are the unique roles for which God created and commanded each gender to fulfill. Both are products of divine decree and determination. To proclaim, teach, and live this truth is not archaic, oppressive, narrow-minded, and unloving, but obedient, biblical, Christian, and compassionate.
Making Man Relevant to the Gospel
Love is not a self-guiding principle. Mankind’s fallen nature is as much in need of divine revelation to define and regulate love as it is to define faith, hope, and every other fruit of the Spirit. The natural, unregenerate heart and mind is only capable of corrupting and perverting love, not truly manifesting it. So when the bulk of professing Christendom, to say nothing of the rest of society, have rejected Scripture as the sole authority for life and practice, when they have subordinated Scripture to human reason, personal preference and experience, and emotionalism, then we are left with nothing but the depraved heart of man to determine what is right and wrong, good and evil, loving and unloving. Jesus Himself defined love as the keeping of His commandments (Jn 14:15). The distinguishing mark of true Christian love, the love that is the fruit of the Spirit, is, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments;” (1 Jn 5:2, 3). It should be obvious that any attempt to create an antithesis between love and obedience to the law of God is an attempt to lead the mind astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and to redefine and undermine regeneration and what it is to be a Christian.
This negation of the law of God has caused the word “sin”, along with any sense of its evil and guilt, to be dropped not only from common speech but from the speech and message of the vast proportion of professing Christianity as being too negative, judgmental, and unloving. Rather sin is given sanitized, psychologized, and respectable names. Instead of using biblical terminology and saying that a person is “enslaved to various lusts and pleasures” (Tit 3:3), and are “indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind” (Eph 2:3), we now say they have an addiction, a disease, or a disorder. Instead of being morally depraved, they are “sexually broken”. People have, for the most part, eagerly accepted this more optimistic and naturalistic view of humanity that rejects the total depravity of man’s nature. At no point does a theology governed by emotion, sense, and sentiment rather than by facts and faith contend more with the clear teaching of Scripture than on the subject of sin, its guilt, and mankind’s total depravity. Modern theology insists that the doctrine of man and sin taught by the Bible is incomprehensible to the present-day mind whose conceptions of man have been shaped largely by humanistic and naturalistic theories and the dogmas of secular psychology. Rather, we are told, people must be met at the level of their felt needs. It has become a maxim that people are really basically good and must be dealt with as “broken” and “hurting”, not confronted with the truth that they are naturally depraved, evil, corrupt, and hostile to God and His word. This is a deadly error. God has not left it to each generation to determine their true condition and their greatest need. There is not one gospel for the first century, another for the tenth century, another for the eighteenth century, and another for our own.
A significant amount of the arguments for adapting the gospel to the needs of this generation are at best suspect. Too often it is a contention for something other than the gospel. It is not the gospel that must be adapted to each generation, but each generation must be adapted to the gospel, its demands, and the obedience which is always the fruit of true regeneration. It is not the gospel which needs to be adapted to modern man, but modern man which must be adapted to the gospel and called to the obedience of faith which the gospel demands, and to the principle that the rule of life as well as the rule of faith is the whole of Scripture. It is not true that the gospel is irrelevant to the modern mind. Indeed, it is foolishness to the modern mind (1 Cor 2:14), and it will remain foolishness until he listens to it and is granted a new birth by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word preached (1 Cor 1:21). It may seem loving, broad-minded, and generous to tone down the sinfulness of sin and to affirm that we can hold to any system of religion and believe in any God we choose and still go to heaven when we die. But it is a deceptive love and generosity. It is a generosity that no one has any right to offer. No benefit is given to faith and the cause of Christ by double-talk, ambiguity, watered-down doctrines, and the soft-peddling of the sinfulness of sin.
Nowadays a great deal is being said about the need to make the gospel relevant. But in this quest for relevance a number of changes have been made to the gospel, and in many circles it is maintained that the Bible as it was understood by first century Christians is not relevant to the modern mind. It is impossible, they say, for people conditioned by modern science and technology to accept and relate to the context in which the New Testament is cast. While it is true that the gospel proclaimed must be relevant, it needs to be stated that it is only by the unadulterated proclamation of the whole counsel of God, particularly concerning sin, its evil, and the judgment of God, that sinners will be convicted of what and where they are and begin to see their true need. Much of the noise for relevance begins with the premise that what people perceive as their need, and what they demand for its fulfillment, is the need to which the gospel and its terminology must be adapted. The result is that the solution offered and the message proclaimed are a response and accommodation to humanly conceived and humanly defined needs and demands. All this involves the fundamental fallacy that men and women apart from the conviction produced by the law of God and the gospel are capable of knowing what their real situation and need are. It is God’s judgment concerning sin and its evil that must be brought to bear upon people where they are if they are to know themselves as they are. When this priority is not observed then all alleged relevance is a distortion and corruption of the gospel and calculated to lead the mind astray. We must boldly, unashamedly, unapologetically, and uncompromisingly proclaim the whole counsel of God which alone will convict people of their true need and make them relevant to the gospel.
The Need for Conviction
What the Bible declares about the nature of man dictates the starting point for the gospel. It must begin with conviction of sin, which means that it must begin with the law of God, “for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rm 3:20); “I would not have come to know sin except through the Law” (Rm 7:7). It is the same for every generation because no one by nature has any true sense of sin, its guilt, its utter sinfulness, and its deserved divine judgment. The reason most people today deny a God who will judge and punish sinners is because we have lost all sense of the sinfulness of sin, and we have lost the sense of sin’s sinfulness because the law of God has been all but expunged from both church and society. When the sense of sin’s guilt and sinfulness is nullified this inevitably leads to a cheapening of the nature and character of God’s love. Before anything else the natural man needs to be convicted of sin, and without this conviction no one can be saved. Any message or teaching that seeks to avoid the conviction of sin is a doctrine of demons calculated to desensitize not convict the conscience of the utter sinfulness of sin and the wrath which it justly deserves, “Behold, I will enter into judgment with you because you say, ‘I have not sinned’ “ (Jer 2:35; cf. 1Jn 1:8, 10).
True conviction, however, convicts not merely that we have done wrong things, but that we have a wrong and corrupt nature. It not only convicts of sin, but that we are by nature vile, wretched, helpless, and hopeless sinners. It shows us that we need more than simply forgiveness and a second chance; we need a new nature and principle of life. It convicts us that we cannot save ourselves, but that we must be born again, and the new birth, the Bible teaches, is not “of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:13). To become a guilty sinner, people do not need to wait until they reach some arbitrary age of accountability. Rather they are hostile haters of God from birth and as soon as they are born they go astray, and their heart is full of evil from their youth (Gn 8:21). The heart is not made evil by acts of sin, but acts of sin issue from a heart that is by nature evil (Mk 7:21-23). Acts of sin are the expression of the natural heart. Sin involves not merely guilt, but depravity, and total depravity at that. What is needed for man’s recovery from sin is not merely atonement, but regeneration, which means that salvation consists not simply in being forgiven, but in being born again. It involves not only pardon but purification and transformation. It is a renewal that is “not on the basis of deeds done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Tit 3:5). The only hope for a changed life lies in a change of heart, which is wholly beyond a person’s own power to effect or achieve. No act of their own will can instigate, initiate, or produce it. This is the clear teaching of the Bible. The natural man is not half-bad and half-good, he is not partially lost, but he is both totally lost and totally helpless to do anything to remedy his lost condition. This is the point of despair to which lost sinners must be brought before they will look to the only One who can save them.
The Failure of Relevance
The gospel of sovereign grace, redemption, and salvation has no meaning apart from sin, its guilt, and mankind’s total depravity. If we adopt any view of humanity other than that of the Bible then we have failed at the very starting point of the gospel and miscarried in our assessment of the human condition in sin which the gospel addresses. The gospel cannot be brought to bear on the real issue of sin and its guilt. This is the failure of relevance as well as the failure of the theories and system of education that have shaped the modern mind; they operate from, inculcate, and perpetuate a faulty view of the true nature of man. This has far-reaching and long-term consequences as John Murray once warned,
“Education is concerned with human beings. But what is man? More properly, who is man? Education apart from any conception of man as to his distinguishing identity, purpose, and destiny, is inconceivable. Many teachers may not be intelligently aware of the theory that under-lies their teaching practice. But theory there must be. If it is not determined by conscious reflection on the part of the teacher, it has been shaped by tradition, or by the training the teacher received, or by the education system in which the teacher plays a part. If education is to be Christian, it must be based upon and conducted in terms of the Christian view of man. If not, it is not Christian, and if not Christian it is alien and opposed to Christian interests.”[2]
Only when we fail to appreciate, or when we reject, the stupendous import of what it means for mankind to be made in the image of God can we ever consider entertaining a theory that places man in continuity with other forms of animal life, or places animal life on a par with human life. To suppose that a process of evolution, no matter how it is conceived, could result in a being that is in the likeness of God is not only absurd, but unchristian. One or the other, the Bible’s account of creation or evolution, must be denied. Both cannot be true. They are irreconcilable. The first imparts the sanctity and sacredness inherent to human life, while the other destroys it. Man made in the image of God is under a perpetual moral duty and obligation to obey the will of God in every moment of his life, and the fulfillment of this obligation consists in conformity to the image of God. Man as a product of evolution is under no such obligation, nor subject to the penalty for failing to live up to his obligation. The higher our conception of man is, the more heinous is the depravity that characterizes fallen man, and the more intense is the enmity toward God and His law which is the expression of depravity, when it is man made in the image of God that is expressing it. The depravity that is expressed must be more total when it is expressed by such a being. Man created in the image of God, instead of softening the doctrine of total depravity, rather points to its severity, intensity, and irreversibility. The greater the potential is for sin, the more atrocious and virulent will be its expression when unrestrained. Unless the gospel we preach and believe is one that addresses total depravity as precisely defined by the Bible then we preach and believe a different gospel. The necessity and nature of regeneration and what it means to be a Christian take on an entirely different meaning.
There are many temptations to lead our mind astray and permit the truths of the Bible to become secondary. We become habituated to a certain pattern of thinking and living. This pattern may be cemented by the legitimacy derived from family, culture, experience, education, or religious tradition, and we are unwilling to have this pattern, conviction, or experience tested by the criteria which all must be subject to. Or perhaps after being examined in light of God’s truth, we are not willing to let that truth be the ultimate authority simply because it would mean a break with and renunciation of the comfortable and conventional. Such are the biblical view of man and his need for conviction and regeneration.
The Christian faith is a body of fact and doctrine to be believed and lived; a body of fact that is decidedly unconventional. It is not a mere profession of belief in those facts and doctrines, but acting on those truths and their implications. It is not a vague sentiment, some mystical feeling of communion with the unseen. It is living a life by the power of the Holy Spirit in conformity to the revealed will of God. This will is revealed in God’s moral law. God does not change; His moral perfections do not change; His holiness does not change; His moral law does not change. In denying the permanent authority and inviolability of the moral law, there is a direct assault upon the Christian faith. It is a direct assault on the authority and reliability of Christ Himself. If we want to further embolden and empower the widespread defection from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and the all-out attack upon true Christianity, we need only to ignore, endorse, support, and spread this antinomian propaganda.
The law of God has both a convicting and restraining influence on unbelievers, and is the pattern for the believer’s sanctification. The moral law, the Ten Commandments, is the norm by which sin is shown to be utterly sinful (Rm 7:13), and the knowledge of sin must come before conviction of sin and its due judgment, just as it is the norm of that righteousness which characterizes the kingdom of God and those who belong to it. Faith in Christ does not arise in a vacuum. It arises in the context of conviction of sin, its guilt, and its judgment, and it is the ministry of the law that brings about this conviction. When the law of God becomes obsolete, then faith in Christ must be made to serve some purpose other than the indispensable message for sinners lost to God, to His love, to His fellowship, to His glory, to all but His wrath. It is the law and only the law that imparts to the gospel and to the demand for repentance and faith the urgency that is in keeping with our hopeless, helpless, and desperate condition for which the gospel is the one and only provision. It is the law and only the law that reveals a sinner’s true condition and true need. The most effective way to deny the reality of sin, and therefore the true message of the gospel, the nature of regeneration, and what it is to be a Christian, is to abolish or nullify the law of God. The age in which we live desperately needs the message that will make people tremble before the awful majesty of a holy and offended God and in the conviction that they are by nature objects of His just, holy, and terrible wrath.
Let me ask you this dear reader, how has our nation descended into such acts of wicked, barbaric, and sinful degeneracy? How has murdering an infant while it is still in the womb become not only commonplace, but a sacrosanct human right? How has the sanctity of marriage become thoroughly desecrated? How has the family unit become so dysfunctional and out of joint? How has something as biologically obvious as gender become a matter of personal feeling? How have we reached the state where the word “gay” and the acronym LGBTQ and all that it stands for have become for many professing Christians legitimate adjectives with which to modify the word “Christian”? How have we come to the point where people can seriously think there is such a person as a homosexual Christian, any more than one can be a fornicator, idolater, adulterer, thief, covetous, drunkard, reviler, or swindler and still inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9, 10)? How has lawlessness come to pervade our society? We cannot explain it on any other grounds than that the spiritual and moral fiber of the people in general, and of professing Christians in particular, has undergone some radical deterioration. There must have been an eclipse of the moral principles that guide and govern the way we are to live. This moral eclipse has its source in the departure from and rejection of the one and only living and true God, which also means a departure from the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the doctrine conforming to godliness (1 Tm 6:3). What we are left with is a refined, respectable, and relevant ungodliness.
It is not necessary to possess any profound and extraordinary knowledge of history to discover the reason and source of this departure, and therefore the cause of the spiritual and moral apostasy now embodied in the ideology of this nation. This source is found in the naturalistic, humanistic, and destructive corruption and criticism of the Bible and true Christianity that has found a welcoming and hospitable home and enthusiastic support. It is the logical and inevitable outcome of that refined pseudo-Christianity that is based on the denial, in word and/or in practice, of the divine authority, inerrancy, and finality of Holy Scripture as the inspired and infallible Word of God. This is without question the root cause of the onslaught on morality, law, authority, decency, liberty, family, truth, right, and goodness that we continue to witness. It is the disease of pseudo-Christianity that has abandoned and denied the very foundation on which true Christianity rests. In this pseudo-Christianity we have the denial of what is our only salvation from the depravity that erupts in just such barbaric, ungodly, degenerate, and destructive actions that now confront us in the avalanche of lawlessness, wickedness, and immorality of such a sort and degree that it taxes our ability to adequately depict and comprehend its true character. All we can say is they are incarnations of open, unashamed, and unrestrained evil and wickedness, “Were they ashamed because of the abominations they had done? They were not even ashamed at all; they did not even know how to blush” (Jer 6:15).
The sad reality of our situation today, and what makes the season so very dangerous, is that judgment must begin with the household of God and the visible and professing church must come under the influence of the same conviction and the same radical and regenerating principles and power already shown to be indispensable to true Christianity. Any semblance of order, love, morality, honesty, goodness, and decency is an impossibility when the entity that is the principle means and instrument of proclamation to Christ and His gospel is unable and unwilling to make any distinction between the clean and the unclean, the regenerate and the unregenerate, and is itself a den of thieves and mother of abominations. It is indeed hypocrisy and apostasy for the visible church to claim to know the way and point to it when she herself makes no distinction between the holy and profane, is in the very act of committing spiritual adultery, and determined to be friends with the world. Judgment must begin with the household of God (1 Pt 4:17), judgment that will result in purification of faith, doctrine, practice, worship, witness, and life. Only a purified church, renewed and recovered to the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, will become the channel of regenerating light and grace to an aimless and degenerate world lost and reeling in the morass of darkness and confusion which the rejection of the law of God Almighty has brought upon it. And only a convicted church will ever be a regenerate and purified church.
Guilt and the Gospel
The sense and consciousness of guilt has suffered tremendously under the assault of secular psychology, its evolutionary view of humanity, and its wholesale integration with the message of the gospel. Couple this with the low view of Scripture held by so-called “progressive” (i.e. liberal) Christians, and we have the makings for a system of religion that is Christian in name only. Within modern Christianity any sense of guilt has been eclipsed by the alleged need for self-esteem, self-worth, self-fulfillment, acceptance, understanding, tolerance, and inclusivity. But inclusivity is only Christian as it is consistent with loyalty to Christ, to His law, and to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. All other is unfaithfulness to and apostasy from the one true God. It is easy to see that when guilt is pushed into the background, and when it is portrayed as harmful and detrimental to a person’s emotional and psychological well-being to where the sense of guilt becomes virtually extinct, that the grand and good news of the gospel becomes correspondingly meaningless; therefore another gospel must be invented that meets these new perceived needs. As a result the gospel currently proclaimed and believed by the mass of professing Christianity is a travesty of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is evident by the number of adjectives which are today affixed to the word “Christian”; adjectives that are utterly incompatible with what it means to be a Christian.
Sin, good and evil, right and wrong, even love are no longer defined by the law of God, but by the depraved and increasingly seared consciences of fallen humanity. Man has a conscience, which means that he has some vague sense that there is a difference between right and wrong. But the conscience has suffered just as much damage from the effects of the fall as has any other part of his being. Man has fallen in the totality of his nature, and the naturalistic humanist must be told that his conscience is depraved and fallen just as we must also remind the Arminian that his will is depraved and fallen. The natural unregenerate man is hostile toward God and not only refuses but has no ability to subject himself to the law of God (Rm 8:7), so how can his fallen conscience in any respect be a trusted guide for what is right and wrong. The conscience of man may provide us with a maxim that there is a difference between good and evil, and that it is right to do what is good and wrong to do what is evil, but it cannot tell us what the good is, nor how we are to relate to it, employ it, and fulfill it. Left to himself fallen mankind will always end up calling evil good and good evil (Is 5:20).
The fact is that in the matter of right and wrong and good and evil we are just as dependent on special divine revelation and its illumination by the Holy Spirit as we are in the realm of spiritual truth. This is a very comprehensive position, and it would be disastrous, it has been disastrous, to dilute or deny it in any way. Tragically, both for our society and for the mass of professing Christianity, fallen man is now the ultimate determiner of good and evil, right and wrong, as well as their just reward and punishments. Scripture alone is no longer a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Sustained emphasis on the moral law, however, is a restraining influence that prevents unbelievers from multiplying the sin that reaps the judgment of God and intensifies the hardening in sin and insensitivity to the demands of God. There can be no denying that this nation, including the greater proportion of professing Christians, have become callous to the sinfulness of sin and benumbed to the demands of God. Unrestrained and sustained violation of God’s commands destroys the peace without which the social order, civil order, judicial order, and political order are impossible, and removes the only barrier that keeps a people from degenerating into a society where everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Even worse than the consequence of breeding an immoral and lawless society, the abolition of the law hamstrings the good news of the gospel. The bad news that makes the gospel good news is, for all intents and purposes, nullified. It is the law that is a tutor that leads us to Christ (Gal 3:24).
Such an emphasis on the law of God is highly distasteful and abhorrent to the vast majority of modern thought both within and without of professing Christianity. Unbelievers argue that to teach and impose such a universal code of human duty and morality, right and wrong, good and evil, violates some higher principle of human liberty. Among many professing Christians it is argued that the thought of a divinely revealed and imposed code of duty, a norm for right affections, thought, and conduct, is the total opposite of the liberty and freedom that is the Christian life, and is a threat to the liberty of conscience which religious freedom requires. We are told that the Christian life must flow from within, and that therefore any commandments, principles, and prescriptions from without in the form of clearly defined instructions is not only foreign, but hostile to the spirit of the gospel. It is inconsistent, we are told, with the principle of love. “Do not tell us about rules, laws, sin, holiness, authority, or a code of morals,” we are told, “rather tell us about the law of love.”
In addition to this, we are told that the Christian is no longer under the law of God, but under grace and the law of Christ. To once again bind people’s conscience to the moral law who have been set free from the law by the gospel of grace is to return, they say, to a gospel of works, and to abolish the distinction between the dispensation of law and the dispensation of grace, and to enslave the believer once again to a yoke of bondage. This charge only appears plausible because our consciences have become desensitized to the demands, holiness, and sanctity inherent in the law of God; that the law reveals the will and nature of God, what it means to be Christ-like, and what it is to be born again. The law of God is the royal law of liberty, and true liberty consists in being enslaved to the Word and law of God. The mind of most people today has been so conformed to this world that the words “slave” and “master” now trigger an immediate and hostile Pavlovian response. But spiritually speaking, everyone is a slave by birth. By our natural birth we are born slaves of sin, and by our new birth we are made slaves of Christ. Being redeemed from the dominion of sin does not mean personal freedom and autonomy, rather the believer has been bought with a price and now belongs to another (1 Cor 6:19, 20). God, His word, and His law are now the believer’s Master, not sin, sense, or self. All other liberty is not liberty but the bondage and servitude to sin, which is a characteristic of the old nature, not of the new which “having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness” (Rm 6:18).
What makes these “progressive” slogans appear so plausible is that they contain elements of truth. It is true that the believer is freed from the power of sin, because they have been saved by the sovereign grace of God. His own obedience to the law has not saved him from sin’s guilt and bondage. They have been redeemed and set free from their futile way of life by the precious blood of Christ (1 Pt 1:18, 19). It is in this sense that the believer is not under law but under grace, which is the sense meant by Paul in Romans 6:14. It is also true that conformity to the will of God must first be from a heart made new, created by the regenerating power and grace of the Holy Spirit, and nurtured by His sanctifying influence. A holy life can never co-exist with an impure heart. Mere outward and mechanical conformity to the letter of the law does not constitute obedience from the heart. Jesus’ most severe words were reserved for those white-washed tombs, the legalistic Pharisees, who washed the outside of the cup but inwardly were full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Without the inward principle of purity, and the inward compulsion of love for God, true obedience is impossible.
But mixed in with all these truths expounded by our modern apostles of love there is also a devastating amount of deadly error. We are not saved through obedience to the law, but we are saved unto obedience. In their idolatry of love they have placed love in opposition to the law of God. They need to be reminded that love is the fulfillment of the law (Rm 13:10). It is not love as opposed to law, but love fulfilling the law. Our modern advocates of love and inclusivity, however, really mean the exact opposite of this. They mean that love fulfills its own edicts, that love is its own ethic, that love not only fulfills, but is also the law that is fulfilled. They mean that love itself is an independent, self-instructing, and self-guiding rule and standard that not only compels a person to do what is right, but also dictates what that right is. This is hardly what Paul meant when he said that love is the fulfillment of the law. Paul not only declares that love fulfills the law, but he also states the law that love fulfills, “For this, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Rm 13:9). Paul cites four precepts from the Ten Commandments to make his point. It is this law, the moral law of God that love fulfills. The defining and directing rule of love is the objective and divinely revealed moral law of God. So then, the Ten Commandments are the norm by which sin is to be known, “sin is lawlessness” (1 Jn 3:4), and they are also the norm by which love is to be known, “love therefore is the fulfillment of the law” (Rm 13:10). Law and love are inseparable, not antithetical. The gospel does not abolish the law; rather it establishes the law (Rm 3:31). Consequently, the Apostle John could write, “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious; anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother” (1 Jn 3:10).
Evidences of Being Regenerate or Born Again
Having lived most of my life in the so-called ‘Bible Belt”, I have met and known scores of people who profess to be Christians, yet in their daily lives have been indistinguishable from those who have never made such a profession. In fact, I myself used to be such a person. I have lived both sides and seen the fallacy of one and the truth of the other. Such people as I once was rarely read their Bibles, much less know them. They take no delight in talking about the things of the Lord. Their lifestyles are as worldly and self-indulgent as their incomes will allow, and oftentimes more than they will allow. Their minds are set on and preoccupied with earthly things. In their dress they take their cues from the culture, or are driven by personal preference rather than biblical principles, and are just as immodest, provocative, ostentatious, and sensual as the world. They allow the culture to dictate the standard of modesty and morality, and what is appropriate and inappropriate. They watch the same ungodly movies, listen to the same music, are influenced by and follow the same fads and trends, and reflect the same values, priorities, thinking, and reasoning of the culture. Their speech is often coarse and profane. Their social media platforms are shallow, vain, self-promotional, complement-seeking, and narcissistic. They have no devotion or love for spiritual truths and biblical principles, especially if they contradict some preference or presupposition, or require an alteration in their thinking, values, beliefs, and lifestyles, and to forsake some cherished lust and sin. Their giving to the work of the Lord is sporadic, self-serving, and minimal at best, with virtually no inconvenience to their overall lifestyle. They are not only utterly incapable of discerning truth from error, the clean from the unclean, the holy from the profane, and the fruit that is from the spirit of the world from the fruit that is of the Spirit of God, but they are completely indifferent toward them. They can listen to what is good and true, and to what is bad and heretical without any discrimination. But for all of this they are quite certain they will go to heaven when they die. If you ask them what is the basis for this confidence, they will tell you that many years ago they accepted Jesus as their Savior and invited Him into their heart, and “once saved, always saved”, is their comfort and assurance. But the sign and evidence that someone is truly regenerate is not some empty prattling about how secure they are once they made a profession of faith, but “that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed” (Rm 6:17).
A person may teach, preach, and profess the gospel and doctrines of Christianity who is himself a total stranger to their saving and sanctifying power, and their witness is not useless or without its benefits. It is the gospel, not the instrument through whom it is preached, that is the power of God unto salvation (Rm 1:16). A person may exhibit a great deal of outward morality, zeal, kindness, generosity, charity, humanitarianism, and benevolence, yet himself be an utter stranger to the reality of the new birth and of saving grace, nor manifest the fruit of the Spirit. A person may give their assent to the truths of the gospel and be able to defend its truths against others, yet not have their own heart and mind affected by those truths. The effects of God’s common grace are not to be confused or confounded with those of saving grace, yet these works of unregenerate people may be things that God commands and are of immense benefit to mankind, but they are not the fruit of regeneration. There is a faith that can be produced by self-effort, or by the pressure of an evangelistic appeal, or by emotional experience, or by a fear of hell, or by the culture, or by a person’s family, or by tradition, or by education, but it is not saving faith that is the fruit of regeneration. There is an external form of religion that outwardly appears righteous to men, but produces no real internal change (Mt 7:21-23; 23:28). There is a respectable, decent, and refined form of Christianity that is perfectly compatible and comfortable with the supposed innocent amusements and self-indulgences of a worldly life. But more than this and of the reality of the new birth, they know nothing. Too often true regeneration and the radical change it effects are explained away in terms of simple-mindedness and bigoted dogmatism. Our contemporary spiritual poverty and its cheap counterfeits are the poverty of biblical ignorance and unbelief. We have lost truth because we have neglected and rejected truth, and in so doing have lost what it means to be born again. The effects of regeneration are not abstract, but concrete. Like the wind, we cannot see it, but we do see its obvious effects (Jn 3:8). The change created by regeneration is a change that can only be known and discerned by its effects. The effects themselves are not regeneration, but true regeneration will always be known by its effects. Where this regeneration exists it cannot help but bear its fruit; fruit that is always consistent with its nature.
Jesus defined the nature of this new birth, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn 3:6; cf. Jn 1:13; 1 Pt 1:23). That is, just as natural life is the product of generation, and always manifests certain qualities that are in keeping with its nature, so is spiritual life a natural product of regeneration and will always manifest qualities that are consistent with its nature. All life manifests qualities that are consistent with its nature (Mt 7:17,18; Jn 8:39,42,44). A good tree “cannot” (ou dunatai) produce bad fruit, and vise-versa (Mt 7:18). It would be against its nature to do so. In other words, like begets like. To assert, as does most of professing Christendom today, that the lifestyle of a believer may be indistinguishable from an unbeliever, is to deny the clear teaching of Jesus that a tree may be known by its fruit. The effects of regeneration are always the same and they always exhibit themselves in the same ways. God has not left us ignorant on this point. The evidences of a true work of God are plainly laid out for us in the Bible. Our Lord has mercifully given us rules, standards, and principles by which we can know our true spiritual condition. So what are these distinguishing properties of a new birth? Some can be known by making analogies from qualities that characterize natural life.
The first is nourishment. Without this, natural life will soon expire and so it is with the spiritual. Spiritual life desires and hungers for spiritual food. Job stated, “I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12; cf. Ps 119:103; Jer 15:16). The Apostle Peter commanded, “Like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word” (1 Pt 2:2). A true Christian longs for and desires the pure, unadulterated word of God, unmixed with man’s “progressive” ideas, opinions, fantasies, and philosophies, uncontaminated with cultural relevancy and false doctrines, and undiluted, unedited, and uncensored of all that might give offence or be considered too controversial ( 2 Cor 4:2; 1Thes 2:3,4). It is the natural quality of all life to desire and require food suited to its nature, without which it cannot live. Grass and hay is suitable food for a horse or cow, but not for a human. Rotting flesh is a feast for a vulture, but not for a human, and carnal, worldly, shallow, superficial, fleshly, man-centered, entertaining, amusing, and flattering messages are a delight to the unregenerate person. “For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh” (Rm 8:5). Just as the natural and physical body primarily longs for the things that gratify the flesh, so the person with a new principle of spiritual life longs for that which will satisfy the spirit (Rm 8:5; Col 3:1,2). One preacher of the Great Awakening, the Rev. Samuel Blair, noticed this marked change among those who truly appeared to be born again,
“The general carriage and behavior of people was soon very visibly altered. Those awakened were much given to reading in the Holy Scriptures, and other good books. Excellent books that had lain by much neglected were then much perused, and lent from one to another; and it was a peculiar satisfaction to people to find how exactly the doctrines they heard daily preached harmonized with the doctrines contained and taught by great and godly men in other parts and former times.”[3]
Notice that the desire was for the Holy Scriptures and “excellent books”, not the spiritual junk food which dominates today’s Christian literature market, ninety-nine percent of which is not worth the paper on which it is printed. Commenting on Jesus’ warning found in Mark 4:24, “Take care what you listen to”, A.W. Pink once wrote,
“Few people today realize the urgent need for “taking heed” unto what they read. Just as the natural food which is eaten either helps or hinders the body—so the mental food we receive either benefits or injures the mind, and that, in turn, affects the heart. Just as it is harmful to listen to the rubbish and poison which is being served from the great majority of present-day pulpits—so it is exceedingly injurious to the soul to read most of what is now being published. …More than forty years ago the saintly Adolph Saphir wrote, “I think the fewer books we read—the better. It is like times of cholera, when we should only drink filtered water.” What would he say if he were on earth today and glanced over the deadly poison sent forth by the heterodox, and the lifeless rubbish put out by the orthodox? Christian reader, if you value the health of your soul, cease hearing and quit reading all that is lifeless, unctionless, powerless, no matter what prominent or popular name be attached thereto….To turn away from the lifeless preachers and publishers of the day—may involve a real cross. Your motives will be misconstrued, your words perverted, and your actions misinterpreted. The sharp arrows of false report will be directed against you. You will be called proud and self-righteous, because you refuse to fellowship with empty professors. You will be termed censorious and bitter—if you condemn in plain speech—the subtle delusions of Satan. You will be dubbed narrow-minded and uncharitable, because you refuse to join in singing the praises of the “great” and “popular” men of the day. More and more, you will be made to painfully realize—that the path which leads unto eternal life is “narrow” and that FEW there are who find it.”[4]
Simply go into virtually any so-called Christian bookstore, or peruse the selections offered by most book distributors, or simply observe the type of books that consistently top the Christian bestseller lists and it should be obvious that the food which makes up the bulk of the diet of professing Christians today is more in keeping with a mind set on the flesh than a mind set on the things of the Spirit of God. A truly regenerate heart and mind has no taste for such slop and drivel but longs for pure and wholesome spiritual food that will feed their hungry soul, not tickle their ears and gratify their flesh. They love to read the biographies of other godly men and women. A.W. Tozer once remarked, “Next to the Holy Scriptures, the greatest aid to the life of faith may be Christian biographies.” True Christian biography does not exalt the person, nor does it pick-apart and exaggerate their faults and weaknesses, but it exalts the God who still uses earthen vessels and weak means to accomplish great things so “that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves;” (2 Cor 4:7). What God has done in the past through imperfect people fully devoted to Him He can still do today.
It is a tragic sign they are as blind as moles and dead as stones who have no hunger, taste, or desire for substantive and hearty spiritual food. Where there is no hunger, there is no life. When the hunger is for things other than the pure word of God – things like programs that cater to specific demographics or music that stimulates the senses even when the lyrics are inane and unbiblical – then the hunger is to gratify the flesh, not the spirit. Spiritual food feeds the spirit, not just the emotions and senses. Spiritual life requires and longs for spiritual food (Am 8:11, 12).
The second is growth. It is natural for children to grow, and to grow fast. Where growth is stunted or absent there is reason to fear something is terribly wrong. Babes in Christ grow fast unless stunted by malnutrition (Hb 5:12-14). All living things grow, and where there is no growth then there is no life. Not only is there perceptible growth, but the growth is proportional, not just in knowledge, but in faith, love, holiness, and maturity. “When I was a child I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child, when I became a man, I did away with childish things” (1 Cor 13:11). So it is with a growing Christian, they do away with childish things and childish thinking and reasoning. They don’t read children’s books (Rm 12:2; 1 Cor 14:20). They are not always learning but never growing (2 Tm 3:7). They don’t always expect to be coddled in their Father’s arms, but will undergo discipline and training so they may share His holiness (Hb 12:9-11). They learn to increasingly walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). They “are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14). The true Christian presses on to maturity (Hb 6:1). Those that are content with stinted and stunted measures of growth have no spiritual life. None of God’s spiritual children are still-born.
A third property is activity. This is an inseparable quality of natural life. When we see a statue standing stock still and motionless, no matter how realistic it may appear, we conclude that it has no life. So when we see professing Christians contenting themselves and assuaging their consciences with a form of godliness devoid of its life and power (2 Tm 3:5), should we not conclude that they are spiritually dead? When their religion consists of nothing more than tradition and external formalism, when their worship is nothing more than sheer emotion and entertainment, and when they are utter strangers to the qualities which God declares as inseparable from truly regenerate people, should we not warn them of their dangerous condition (Is 29:13)? When the direction and actions of their life betray the absence of the fruit of the Spirit, when we see them pursuing what the Christian is told to flee, and trivializing the pursuit of practical Christianity (1 Tm 6:11), when we see them becoming less and not more obedient and holy, is it not reasonable to suppose they are devoid of spiritual life (Ps 81:15; Ezk 33:31; Tit 1:16)? Spiritual life always produces spiritual activity that aims first and foremost at the glory of God and cleanses the Christian “from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1).
Perhaps no New Testament epistle is more explicit concerning the evidences of a new birth than that of First John; therefore, for the remainder of this paper I will confine myself to those effects which the apostle whom Jesus loved was inspired to write for our benefit.
The Apostle John first of all declared, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” (1 Jn 1:6). He states essentially the same truth in 1 John 3:9 and 5:18, “No one who is born of God practices sin,”, and again, “We know that no one who is born of God sins;”. A regenerate person does not commit sin as a pattern and habit of life. They do not willingly sin; rather when they sin it is against their will. They no longer sin with the full consent of their heart, mind, and will like the unregenerate person does. There was a time when the thought of whether or not something was sinful never entered their mind, or if they knew it was wrong, they never felt guilt or grief after committing the act of sin. They were able to rationalize it, justify it, redefine it, or give it a respectable name. They and sin were on good and peaceable terms. It was the thought of not gratifying their particular lust that caused them grief. They were for all intents and purposes a slave to one or more sinful lusts and desires. If they could not indulge them actually, then they would indulge them vicariously in their mind. But since his new birth he hates sin, he feels the guilt and sinfulness of sin, he flees from it, fights against it, considers the remainders of indwelling sin within him his greatest plague, mourns and confesses it when he succumbs to its deceits and influence, and longs to be free from sin altogether. He works to cleanse himself “from all defilements of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1). His new spiritual nature under the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit instructs him “to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age” (Tit 2:11, 12). He cannot separate himself from his old sinful nature, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8); but he can say that he passionately abhors it, and that his greatest desire is to never sin at all. He cannot prevent sinful thoughts from coming into his mind, but he does not indulge them and can and does take every thought captive to the glory of Christ, and that his whole nature recoils against them and does not consent to them, as does that of the unregenerate person.
Secondly, John writes, “everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him” (1 Jn 2:29). The truly regenerate person is a holy person. They strive to live in obedience to the will of God as revealed in His commandments. They have as their ambition to do the things that are pleasing to the Lord (2 Cor 5:9), and to avoid all that God hates. Their desire is to love the Lord God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves. His obedience is not perfect and no one will tell you that sooner than he, but it is a sincere obedience from the heart. He will be able to echo the words of the great pastor and hymn-writer John Newton, “I am not what I ought to be; I am not what I want to be; I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be; and by the grace of God I am what I am.” Obedience and submission to the will of God are his desire, his goal, his ambition, and his lifelong pursuit
Thirdly, John says, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world;” (1 Jn 5:4). A regenerate person does not make the world’s opinions their rule of right and wrong, good and evil. Only those who are from the world speak as from the world and give any weight to the world’s opinions, values, judgments, and priorities (1 Jn 4:5). The regenerate person more often than not finds themselves going against the current of the world’s ways, practices, trends, fads, notions, customs, values, and priorities. “What will others think or say?” no longer has any influence with them. He overcomes the love of the world, the fear of man, and the desire for the applause and approval of man. He cares more about what God thinks than what people think, and he fears offending God more than offending man. He takes no pleasure in the things that most of the people around him call a good time. The things on which they place such great value and that bring them happiness he can see no point in. He cannot enjoy what they enjoy or keep the company that they keep. He cannot get excited over what excites them; instead to him they are vain, shallow, superficial, unprofitable, worldly, and totally unworthy of a being made in the image of God. He overcomes the fear of the world and is content to be misunderstood, misrepresented, and maligned. He makes a priority of what all who are around him consider unnecessary to say the least. He values spiritual truths and realities over the passing pleasures of this world. He overcomes the love of money and all that the world thinks it can provide. He sees that its promises are deceitful and that its security is uncertain. He sets his mind on the things above, where Christ is, not on the things of this earth. Tell him that his views are not those of the majority, not even of the majority of professing Christians, that he is out of step with the current thought and practice, and that he is alienating himself and making himself an oddball, yet he will remain steadfast and immovable. He is prepared to stand alone against the world. He is no longer a slave to the world, its opinions, fashions, values, and customs. He can say like the godly Robert Chapman, “I make it my aim to please Christ. If I please others I am glad, but if I fail, I am not disappointed.”
Here are six marks of true regeneration. More could be added but these are more than sufficient to convince any thinking person that the mass of professing Christianity today bears no relationship to the description of the Christianity presented in the Bible. Only a true work of God’s regenerating grace can prepare the heart and mind for the suffering and hardships that come with living in a dangerous season, and to enable them to resist the temptations that attend suffering as a Christian. We live in a time of gross darkness and misinformation on the doctrine of regeneration and what it is to be a Christian. Multitudes who claim to be Christians have never come under the conviction for sin, and even fewer are willing to have the word of God govern their life, practice, experiences, and beliefs. Millions are equating regeneration with a decision, or attributing its cause to their own belief, or confounding it with baptism. Let us beware of this pseudo-Christianity that dominates today and that makes the times in which we live so very perilous. True saving faith is the fruit of regeneration, not its cause, and only a true faith will persevere to the end.
In our next study I will show the necessity of a growing and strengthening faith for the right management of our sufferings, and some means toward that end.
[1] Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (First published 1864: reprint by Banner of Truth Trust: London, 1967), 320.
[2] John Murray, ‘Christian Education’ in Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 370.
[3] Archibald Alexander, The Log College: Biographical sketches of William Tennent and his students together with an account of the revivals under their ministries (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1968), 160. (Emphasis mine)