Bible Lesson 122

THE DOCTRINE OF REGENERATION (Ephesians 2:1)

And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sin

Sin is naturally exceeding dear to us; to part with it is compared to plucking out our right eyes. Men may refrain from wonted ways of sin for a little while, and may deny their lusts in a partial degree, with less difficulty; but it is heart-rending work, finally to part with all sin, and to give our dearest lusts a bill of divorce, utterly to send them away. But this we must do, if we would follow those that are truly turning to God: yea, we must not only forsake sin, but must, in a sense, forsake all the world, Luke 14:33 Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple.

To properly understand our subject (Regeneration), we must lay some groundwork, and in line with that we have to understand that we live and die in a world that contains only two types of people: there are saved people and lost people, live people, and dead people, blessed people and condemned people, people who are what God originally made them be and people who are sold out to the devil and his designs.

Every one of us, except Jesus Christ, has been born into this world, dead in trespasses and sin; because of inheriting Adam’s nature, a nature that was rebellious and disobedient. We need to go back to the beginning of time, back to Adam and Eve as they lived in innocence, able to walk and talk with God in their paradise, called Eden. God had breathed life into Adam and then put him to sleep and took one of his ribs and made a help-meet for him that Adam called Eve.

God told Adam that he could eat of every tree in the garden paradise, except one tree and that was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God warned him, that in the day that he ate of that tree, he would surely die (immediate separation from God). Adam was not faithful to obey God; but God was faithful to put him to death Spiritually at that moment, to begin the process of physical death, he would not physically die until he was 930 years old.

The spirit died in Adam and he could no longer commune with God and that dead spiritual condition is what we inherit from Adam. We were not born innocent, we never were able to connect or communicate with God. Further, than that we had no desire to communicate with God, our nature was against God and we loved to sin because we did not and could not know God; because we were born without the ability or the desire to know God. That is the problem with fallen mankind, He is dead and happily so, unless and until God takes a hand to quicken him and cause him to realize that he is without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). We are born into this world without hope and God, under the wrath of God because of our enmity against God (Ephesians 2:2-3). What a wretched position we find ourselves in although we do not have enough spiritual discernment to even realize that we hang over hell on a spider-web.

That is the predicament that we all inhabit the earth at birth. Man is under the judgment of God, a candidate for hell and it’s terrors, is there anything that man can do to save Himself’ Man cannot save himself! Romans 3:23 indicts us all as sinners when God inspired the writer to pen there in verse 23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Then in Romans 6:23 we find that The wages of sin are death” and that reaffirms our inevitable condemnation; however, thankfully that is not all that Romans 6:23 has to say, it goes on to inform us “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Man cannot save himself, (Psalms 3:8; Isaiah 43:11;), but God has a gift for us and that gift is the gift of eternal life. This gift from God is free, given to whom, God wills to give it. It is not something that can be wrestled from God, or bought, or stolen.

It is a gift. The big fisherman Peter gives us a view of this gift in his first epistle and he says under the inspiration of God, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1st Peter 1:3-5). We are born without hope, under the wrath of God for our sin, because of the nature we inherited from the first Adam. The first Adam, left us bereft of hope, sinful, disobedient, and not able to reach God unless God interceded in our helplessness; however, before the foundation of the world God had set in motion the solution for the problem that the First Adam caused.

God had prepared the only solution to the problem of sin, and that would be a perfect, sinless, substitution sacrifice for sin, and we know that to be the Lamb of God, His one and only Son, Jesus Christ. The first Adam brought sin, death, and separation from God to us all, but now, Jesus Christ, the Last Adam, would bring healing and forgiveness and cleansing to those who God would save. Jesus Christ, the One and Only Son of God, would not fail to bring about a people who would be all that God had intended His Children to be.

Now, we have found that all of us are born with a problem that we cannot solve, a problem that carries with it the sentence of death and eternal separation from God. Adam brought the offense, judgment, and condemnation, because of sin, but Jesus Christ by His righteousness, brought that gift of God, justification, righteousness, and grace (Romans 5:12-21). The First Adam loaded us down with sin, death, judgment, and condemnation; but the Last Adam (Jesus Christ), brought us grace and mercy, forgiveness, cleansing, and a heavenly inheritance. God planned it all and set it in motion before the foundation of the world, and then implements it all at just the right time”.in time. At our birth, no one could know, except God who had planned it in eternity, who would be saved and who would not. We were all born into this world dead in trespasses and sin, so how do we come to God’ We don’t God has planned it so that He comes to us, just as we saw in Ephesians 2:1, God has to quicken those whom He will save. We must remember that God will not look upon sin and so when Adam sinned in the garden he lost his intimate relationship with God and passed that awful condition to all of his progeny including you and me.

God had said that sin had a cost and that cost was separation from God. That cost had to be paid, but the sacrifice had to be perfect. It had to be perfect and it had to be human because that was who had to die, so rather than put all of us to death, God took it upon Himself to die as our substitute, and so He sent His Son, and right here, we have to remember that our God is one God but He operates with his creatures in three distinct personalities, Father in heaven, Jesus Christ on the earth, and the Holy Spirit: not three Gods but one God all coequal and always of the same mind (A Trinity). Adam disobeyed and we were born under the wrath of God because we liked Adam’s ways, the debt owed because of sin (death) and again, that was not just physical death but separation from God in hellfire. We owed a debt that we could not pay but God took that upon Himself in the body of Jesus Christ and went to the cross to be humiliated by the creatures that He had created, to be laughed at and mistreated to the point that He was not even recognizable as a human being (Isaiah 52:14).

He was spat upon and scourged and finally nailed to a cruel cross to bleed and die. The sinless for the sinful, the perfect for the wicked, that was our sacrifice and because Jesus died in our place, and bore our sins away, we are not free to serve and glorify Him in the way that we live. Jesus did not die for everyone; because if He had then everyone would be saved, instead He died for those whom the Father had elected before the foundation of the world, those who would be regenerated in time by the Holy Spirit at God’s command, quickened in the Spirit, born again by God, in Christ Jesus, unto good works which God has from the beginning ordained or predestinated to live in those good works. In Salvation we are Justified by faith in Jesus Christ, Sanctified by the experience of salvation and the teaching of the Holy Spirit in us, and in the mind of God, we are already in heaven.

I say that because in Romans 8:30, the Lord speaks to us through the writer of the Romans and says, “Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” In that scripture, the word translated as glorified is in the past tense, which means it is a done deal. Think about that, whatever God has decreed or predestined will most certainly come to pass, so if you are saved, truly saved and obedient to God, you are seated in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:4-6).

We now know from the Word of God, the Bible, that we have a debt (death for sin), but we also know that God has a gift, which is eternal life in Jesus Christ, so how do we get into Christ’ Is it as simple as we think, do we simply chose one day to be saved and go and join a church’ That is ridiculous because that puts man in charge of God, so what do we do’ Well, we were created as rational, thinking people, and we all have been informed, to some degree, about God and Christ, and most of us know for a fact that our lives are not what they should be. My recommendation to people is to begin to read their Bibles because God says that “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” (Romans 10:17).

For those who cannot read they must seek out godly men whom the Spirit will draw them to and listen to what they preach. Nobody is saved without knowledge that the Holy Spirit brings to all who are saved. The Holy Spirit convicts people of sin, judgment, and righteousness (John 16:5-15; John 14:25-26). The Lord came and lived with us here on the earth, as a man with two natures (One fully God, and the other fully man). He came to save His people, and the only way we ever know who those people are is to watch to see if they conform to the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29). Jesus did not die to create some kind of potential that men can then choose to complete when they want to be saved. That would be works religion and we are saved by faith and not by works. We are saved to work, not saved by works (Ephesians 2:10).

The question now becomes, how do we get to Jesus Christ’ We know that we learn about faith from the Word of God, but how do we get to Jesus Christ, who is the Savior’ The Bible tells us, and Jesus spoke it in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him at the last day.”(Philippians 2:12-13). I know you think that I keep repeating myself in listing the steps of this lesson on regeneration, again and again, but that is how we learn anything, by hearing it or reading it over and over, so here we go again. Man is born with the nature of the first Adam, He was rebellious and disobedient to God and so brought that nature of disobedience to everyone who has been born since then by flesh and blood. We are born in sin and we continue in sin until we are saved by God. We saw that God had placed a punishment on sin and that punishment was death, a separation between the sinner and God. Man cannot save himself, because he has nothing but death and hell and Satan in himself.

Man has nothing in him that can connect him to God. God took steps to save some from every tribe, tongue, and nation before the foundation of the world. That would be a gift that God has for man, but it was for some but not all without exception. God calls us in time when He begins the salvation process, or act. When God calls anyone that call is effectual and all who are called by God will come and they will be saved. In salvation, God calls us to faith in His Son Jesus Christ, and His work on

Calvary, as being sufficient for our salvation. Salvation is all of God and God calls us out of the world and sin, to Himself through His Son Jesus Christ, then God Justifies sanctifies and glorifies those whom He calls. He regenerates them and rebirths them in Christ Jesus, unto good works which God ordained before the foundation of the World. God changes us from the inside out, and we are raised to newness of life and we cooperate with God one hundred percent because we are new creatures, with the old things, the things of Adam, passed away, and all things being new in Jesus Christ. God has to draw and the word that is translated draw there is used elsewhere in the Bible as drag.

God draws or drags us as in a fishnet, by Divine power which envelopes the salvation process. We were a people who loved darkness but God draws us out of the darkness into His marvelous light. I don’t know about you but I remember well my salvation experience. Mine was not a momentary thing because it came during a time that I had all the time I needed to study the Bible. I was always around a Bible but never did feel any compunction to read or study it until God by His Holy Spirit created in me a strong desire to read and understand His Word, the Bible. So I began to read the Bible and I read it sometime most of the day and into the night, all the while God created questions and problems for my understanding, that went on for approximately 18 months, and then God began to answer the questions and clear up the problems in my mind.

Just as surely as I had a question as I continued to read and study the Bible, it seemed as if some invisible hand had underlined a scripture that gave me the answer to my questions. This went on for perhaps another 18 months until I knew for certain that what I had been studying was the inerrant Word of God. I surrendered to His Grace and Mercy and prayed Lord, if you can use a beat-up old piece of equipment like me, I will do my best to make you a good hand. I have been faithful to keep that commitment and God has never failed to provide all I need. The Word of God is precious to me and I read and reread it every day, for in it I have found forgiveness of my sin, salvation, freedom, assurance of an inheritance in heaven. I found Jesus Christ and through Him, I know the Father and the Holy Spirit. I am not saying that your salvation experience has to be long and exhaustive like mine, yours may be kind of like the Apostle Paul’s was, but in the final analysis they everyone follow the same line.

Sin is the problem that everyone who is born of the flesh experiences in this world. We have been effected in every aspect of our lives by sin, and we are depraved creatures whose father is the devil (John 8:44). We may not all sink to the depths of depravity, but we all have the potential to do anything that our minds can conceive because we do whatever the devil leads us to do. That is the reason for John 3:16-21, where we find that God had a love for His people and sent His Son Jesus Christ to die in our place to redeem us from sin and condemnation. God would not look at us as we stood before salvation and we were all condemned because we did not believe in Jesus Christ. What did we need to be acceptable to God’

We needed to be regenerated, born again, brought back to a consciousness of God, able to see the Kingdom of heaven. Preachers and churches do no have salvation in a bag, they cannot simply sprinkle salvation on you and get you to repeat a prayer after them and you be saved. They can make you a church member but not a Christian, that is God’s Sovereign responsibility. In the process of true salvation, you will come to realize your desperate condition. God will allow you to see yourself as He sees you and you will experience godly sorrow. That is not the same as being sorry for being found out, or having been caught at it. What it does mean you will have come to know God and all His exceeding glory, power, and sovereignty; and you will realize the truth about how far you find yourself away from what God created you to be. Remember now, we cannot regenerate ourselves, and without regeneration, we cannot have that intimate relationship and friendship with God.

It takes the grace of God, to rebirth us to a relationship that can daily follow after God. We can attempt to act differently in the flesh but the flesh is weak and without the power of God in us, His children, it won’t last. Titus speaks of the flesh of man when it tells us there in Titus 1:16, “They (fallen man), profess to know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable, dishonest, and disqualified for every good work.” That is the reason for the gospel of good news, and the grace of God, as Paul under the inspiration of God, writes to Titus in chapter two of Titus and says, ” For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His special people, zealous of good works.”(Titus 2:11-14).

What about those that have lived what, if we judge them by ourselves, really good lives. They have been gracious, giving, good husbands, fathers, sons, and all the rest that most communities praise men for doing. What then, aren’t they going to go to heaven’ The answer is “not unless they have been under the blood of Jesus Christ and reborn and obedient! Good in the sense of the world and the flesh has never been good enough for God. It takes the blood of Jesus Christ to make anyone Just in the eyes of God. Think about this, the Scriptures teach that man is spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1); blind (Ephesians 4:18); a slave to sin (John 8:34; Romans 6:17,19); needing deliverance from the powers of darkness (Colossians 1:13); incapable of knowing and discerning the things of the Spirit (1st Corinthians 2:14); Incapable of changing himself (Jeremiah 13:23); and defiled in conscience (Titus 1:15).

Christ died to save sinners, so you must come to the end of yourself and surrender it all to Jesus Christ. I heard a song recently that describes how we come to Jesus Christ and the title of the hymn was “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”. The story behind the song was that a preacher named Thomas A. Dorsey was preaching a revival some distance from his home and at the same time his wife was expecting a child. To make a long story short, while he was away, his wife delivered the baby but died in childbirth. He wrote this song and I can imagine that it was his prayer as he rushed home to this situation.

All of us have experienced some kind of traumatic experience at one time or another and we can remember the absolute pain and terror that comes when we lose a loved one; and the only place that we can find any peace is with the one who created, sustains, and saves us and that is the Lord. The Hymn goes like this..”Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I’m tired, I am weak, I am lone. Through the storm, through the night Lead me on to the light. Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.

When my way grows drear, precious Lord lingers near, when my life is almost gone. Hear my cry, hear my call, Hold my hand lest I fall, Take my hand precious Lord lead me home. When the darkness appears And the night draws near and the day is past and gone, at the river I stand, Guide my feet, hold my hand, Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.

Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on let me stand, I’m tired, I’m weak, Lord I’m worn. Through the storm, through the night Lead me on to the light, Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.”

What a beautiful song, what a wonder and intimate relationship are ours with the Sovereign of this world, and that should be our thought when we experience trouble and loss in this world.

I leave you with this question or these questions to ask of yourself to determine if you have truly been saved. Can you look to that time that your life radically changed because God had given you the New Birth’ Are you that New Creature that has the old things passed away and all things new’ Are you obedient to the Word and Will of God’ If you cannot do that then God won’t hold it against you if you go back to the cross and cast yourself with nothing held back on Christ and His Work on the Cross.

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob