Regeneration: A Narrative Portrait

INTRODUCTION

The Bible describes human salvation in a variety of ways. For example, justification refers to guilty human beings gaining an innocent legal standing in God’s sight, while adoption denotes a person’s entrance into the family of God. Each biblical description for salvation reveals something about the character of God and his ancient plan to restore his fallen creation to himself. This paper will examine God’s gracious salvation of human beings through the lens of regeneration, tracing this theme throughout the promise-fulfillment storyline of Scripture.

Regeneration can be defined as the sovereign act of God whereby he implants new spiritual life in a person, instantaneously and subconsciously changing the governing disposition of the sinner’s heart from sin unto holiness. Although this doctrine receives its fullest expression in the New Testament, salvation history as a whole describes regeneration under three distinct, yet overlapping, rubrics: resurrection, fulfillment of the Law, and new creation.

Resurrection

In the Garden of Eden, God told Adam that he could eat from all the trees except for one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If Adam ate from that forbidden tree, God promised that he would “surely die” (Gen 2:17). Adam did eat, however, and all humanity has subsequently followed Adam along his path of sin, arriving at the same destination which Adam reached—death (Rom 5:12). Death, both spiritual and physical, has therefore become the perennial problem for humankind, and the only possible resolution to sin’s deadly effects must come through a regenerating act of God, a resurrection from the dead.

Israel, under the Old Covenant, found the dark principle of death at work among them as well. After God’s powerful deliverance of his enslaved people from Egypt in the Exodus, God brought the people into the land which he promised to give to Abraham. Although Israel had an abundance of provisions within the land, they nevertheless turned away from God and his Law, giving themselves over to idolatry. Just as God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden for their rebellion, so also God expelled Israel from the promised land for their sin. In both cases, this casting away from the presence of God (i.e. “exile”) could be described as “death.”

As Israel languished in exile under the Babylonians, God’s people longed for the day when God would restore them as a nation again. One text which vividly portrays this hope is Ezekiel 37:1-14. The prophet Ezekiel knew well that Israel was riddled with spiritual corruption, and he metaphorically compared her present situation—dead in sin and exile—to dry bones. A decayed human carcass was among the most repulsive things a ceremonially clean Jew could ever encounter, making Ezekiel’s imagery especially shocking. Nevertheless, God would one day reverse this putrid state of affairs. In his vision, Ezekiel commanded muscles and skin to cover the dry bones, as well as breath to enter their newly-formed lungs (37:6). The result was that the metaphorical graves were opened and the people, now energized by the life-giving Spirit of the Lord, stood to their feet and marched back into the land (37:10-14).

This passage from Ezekiel illustrates the Jewish hope of a coming age in which, not only Israel, but also the entire human race would be resurrected from the dead (Dan 12:2-3). Jews of the first century expected God’s kingdom to come suddenly—on earth as it was in heaven—and the end-time resurrection to happen in one, dramatic, large-scale event. The early Christians, however, announced that the resurrection had happened “to one person in the middle of history in advance of its great, final occurrence, anticipating and guaranteeing the final resurrection of God’s people at the end of history.” With the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, God had thereby inaugurated his promised age-to-come in which his righteous ones would be raised from the dust in order to “shine brightly” (Dan 12:3).

Although the age of resurrection was inaugurated on Easter morning, it has not yet been consummated (1 Cor 15:20, 23). Believers are therefore caught in the overlap of the ages. The present evil age continues, but Christians are rescued from it by the cross and resurrection of Jesus (Gal 1:4), as well as by the transforming, regenerating power of the Spirit (Titus 3:5-7). A future, bodily resurrection still remains the penultimate hope for God’s people. Yet, God in his wisdom has decided to enact his plan of resurrection in a two-stage process. God works out this staggered fulfillment in the present life of the Christian by his Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 6:4; Eph 2:5-6; Col 3:1).

The apostle Peter makes explicit the connection between the new, regenerate life of the believer and the resurrection from the dead. Peter exults in the reality that the church has been “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3). Peter’s words disclose his theological belief in inaugurated eschatology: An event has occurred in the past (the resurrection of Jesus) because of which believers are now spiritually regenerated (born again) leading to an earnest expectation of a glorious, future inheritance (a living hope). God’s Spirit actually applies the achievement of Jesus’ resurrection to the Christian’s heart by new birth. This regenerating act of God permanently links the believer with the future world-to-come so that he partakes of resurrection blessings in advance of the last day. Regeneration is therefore equivalent to spiritual resurrection from the dead.

Fulfillment of the Law

God’s sovereign act of human regeneration is described throughout the narrative of Scripture, not only as resurrection from the dead, but also as the fulfillment of the Law. To be precise, the Law’s fulfillment is a result of regeneration, but the cause and effect dynamic is so tightly knit that, it can be said, “The person who is regenerate, this person fulfills the Law.” Moses makes this close correlation evident in his sermon to Israel on the border of Canaan (Deut 30:1-14).

Before entering the promised land, Moses reiterated the covenant blessings and curses to the people of Israel (Deut 28), urging them to remain faithful to God. Knowing their rebellious nature, however, Moses predicted Israel’s future banishment from the land (Deut 30:1). In light of this certain future calamity, Moses promised the people that if “you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul,” then God would restore them to the land and prosper them once again (Deut 30:2-5). Yet, Israel simply did not have the spiritual vitality to return and obey (evidenced by their perpetually disastrous wilderness wanderings). Hard-hearted Israel would remain in exile forever apart from a gracious intervention of God.

Israel needed a regenerate heart, and that’s exactly what God promised to them: “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants . . .” (Deut 30:6). God would one day act for his people, even in their apostasy and exile, to change their inner disposition so that they would love and obey God fully (6-8). God would then richly bless his obedient people (9-10). In this context of God’s sovereign, regenerative activity, Moses proclaimed that the Law was indeed “not too difficult” (11), and that “the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it” (14). God’s regenerating grace would enable Israel to fulfill the Law.

Paul draws upon Deuteronomy 30 in Romans 10:6-8. Just as Moses proclaimed a future exile and restoration, Paul used this same text to announce an eschatological fulfillment of those realities through the Christ-event. All those who now confess “Jesus as Lord” and believe that “God raised him from the dead” demonstrate the fact that that the “word” has been brought “near” to them (Rom 10:8-9) and their hearts have been circumcised, just as Moses promised. Paul employs this intertextual fulfillment motif in order to proclaim that the end of exile and the promised restoration have now occurred, carried out by Christ’s work and God’s regenerating Holy Spirit.

Paul has an explicit theology of the Law’s fulfillment through the agency of the Spirit’s regenerating work. He states that the “requirement of the Law” is “fulfilled” in those who walk according to the Spirit, rather than according to the flesh (Rom 8:4; cf. 2:7). Because of the sinful flesh of humans, the Law could only bring death to its adherents (Rom 7:9). The Law was weak therefore to grant the life it wanted to give (7:10), but what the Law could not do, God did (8:3): “The life the Torah intended, indeed longed, to give God’s people is now truly given by the Spirit” (8:4).

Paul’s theological perspective on this matter is surely derived, at least in part, from Ezekiel 36. The prophet Ezekiel, in the context of exile (once again), informs Israel that, although they have profaned the holiness of God’s name among the nations where they were scattered, God would act to re-gather them, vindicating his own holiness (36:22-24). In the midst of Israel’s exodus-style restoration, God would “sprinkle clean water” on the people to cleanse them from filthy idolatry (Ezek 36:25). God would also transplant their stony hearts with tender, teachable hearts, causing them to obey his good Law (26-27). This divine, regenerative activity, coinciding with the end of exile, would directly result in a new, obedient lifestyle—a fulfilling of the Law’s requirements. G.K. Beale suggested that Paul consciously alludes to Ezekiel’s prophesy in Romans 8:4. If Beale is correct, then Paul perceives the regenerating work of the Spirit as the eschatological sign that the exile has come to an end. Free from the bondage of sin and death, God’s people now keep God’s Law from their hearts.

The New Testament as a whole unanimously affirms the internalization of the Law through regeneration. James exhorts his audience to “receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls” (1:21). This command assumes the inauguration of the new covenant promised by Jeremiah (31:31-34) in which God’s Law is now written upon the heart of the believer, rather than upon tablets of stone. New Covenant Christians, by the Holy Spirit’s regenerating power, can now truly fulfill the Law.

New Creation

Intertwined with the themes of resurrection and fulfillment of the Law, the Bible also presents regeneration as new creation. Adam and Eve, God’s image-bearing creatures, were given dominion over God’s creation to rule over it (Gen 1:27-28). Rather than stewarding the earth under God’s good rule, man and woman usurped God’s authority by heeding the serpent’s evil words. This tragic choice led to God’s curse on the entire creation (Gen 3:17-19; Rom 8:20). Otherwise known as “the Fall,” this event brought about the cursed state of affairs (including sin, corruption, and death) which has been the due inheritance of all (but one) of Adam’s progeny.

Although the created order had fallen into disarray through Adam’s sin, and although Israel had failed at her commission to shine God’s light into the world as a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6), God still had plans for his broken and battered world. Isaiah prophesied concerning a day when God would restore the faithful remnant of Israel to a new Jerusalem and radically remake the entire universe (Isa 65:17-25; cf. 11:6-9, 43:18-21, 66:22). Isaiah paints a prophetic picture of a revitalized age of peace and harmony within God’s ultimate new creation.

Isaiah’s vision of God’s new creation actually began to emerge in the person and ministry of the Lord Jesus. Particularly in the healings of Jesus, the end-time kingdom of new creation was manifest “since the healings were a beginning reversal of the curse of the old fallen world.” Accordingly, Christ’s casting out of demons demonstrated his defeat of Satan, the defeat which Adam should have enacted by casting Satan out of the Garden. When John the Baptist asked about Jesus’ identity, Jesus replied that “the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up” (Matt 11:3)— all of which are signs of the Isaianic new-creational kingdom (Isa 29:18, 35:4-6, 42:7).

The ministry of Jesus indeed began to inaugurate God’s age of restoration, but the new creation dawned particularly in the rising of the Son of God from the dead. The first Adam brought corruption and death into the world by his sin (1 Cor 15:21-22). Through his resurrection, however, the last Adam brought imperishability and immortality to birth (15:42-45). Christ has now powerfully and decisively introduced the life-giving power of heaven to the dying, earthly sphere of existence, crushing death in the process (1 Cor 15:47-49, 54-55). C.S. Lewis is eloquent on this issue and is worthy to be heard at length:

The New Testament writers speak as if Christ's achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the "first fruits," the "pioneer of life." He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and defeated the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened. On the first Easter morning, Jesus Christ, the eschatological Adam, rose victoriously from the tomb as the foundation stone and the launching pad for God’s project of new creation.

Now that God has inaugurated his new-creational reign in the resurrection of Jesus, all men are summoned to participate. The gospel call goes out to every human indiscriminately, inviting them and commanding them to submit to and believe in Jesus as Lord, the King of new creation. When people respond to this good news in faith and repentance, Paul describes them in this way: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor 5:17).

In this verse, Paul is employing the theological category of union with Christ. Those who are outside of Christ remain firmly planted within the “old creation,” that is, they remain “in Adam.” Union with Adam implies an unbroken relationship with the present fallen age and all which is tainted by sin. Union with Christ, however, denotes a state of existence in which the old age of Adamic influence no longer has mastery over the believer: “old things passed away; new things have come.” Hence, a new, regenerate life of righteousness ensues.

Spiritual union with Jesus Christ—the fountainhead of the new creation—is accomplished by God’s Holy Spirit through a sovereign act of regeneration. Just as Adam and the first creation were not asking to be made, so also the new creation (and the new humanity within it) are irresistibly begotten by God’s sovereign will and not by “autonomous human effort.” The God who regenerates is the same God who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness” at the great genesis of heaven and earth. Now, once again, God is the one “who has shone in our hearts . . .” to bring life and spiritual renovation to his image-bearers through a sovereign burst of new creation (2 Cor 4:6).

God’s regenerating act of new creation incorporates the Christian into the risen Christ, and produces in the believer the fruit of the eschatological age-to-come. The fruit of the Spirit is therefore the fruit of new creation (Gal 5:22-23; cf. 6:15). This new-creational “fruit” consists in attitudes and actions which reflect the realities of God’s new world, the new heavens and new earth described by Isaiah. Although the age-to-come has only been inaugurated and not yet consummated, believers are nonetheless called to bear this eschatological fruit in advance. In fact, fruit-bearing is the very purpose of regeneration: “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph 2:10; also cf. James 1:18). In Ephesians 2:10, union with Christ (“in Christ Jesus”) is the sphere of new creation (“His workmanship”) with the intention that Christians would produce fruit in their lives (“good works”). Regeneration is a blessing of the new creation in which believers are spiritually united to the resurrected Jesus and thereby equipped to bear the fruit of the age-to-come, anticipating the final day when all things will be made new (Rev 21:1).

CONCLUSION

Ever since the Fall, God has been working out his good purposes to reclaim and rescue his world from every power of darkness. This rescue operation includes, as the pinnacle of his creation, gathering a pure people for his own possession (Titus 2:14). In the person and work of Messiah Jesus, particularly in his death and resurrection, God has actualized these purposes in history. Humans can partake of God’s saving power through a divine act of regeneration. Joined to Jesus, Christians now experience spiritual resurrection, fulfillment of the Law through an obedient life, and an inner transformation consisting in new creation. God’s work of regenerating grace in every believer’s heart is the sure sign that each one ultimately belongs to Christ. The church, forever linked to God’s future world by the indwelling Holy Spirit, now eagerly awaits Christ’s return when he will finally consummate his ultimate work of universal rebirth (Rom 8:19-23).


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beale, G.K. “The Eschatological Conception of New Testament Theology.” In Eschatology in Bible and Theology: Evangelical Essays at the Dawn of a New Millennium, edited by Kent E. Brower and Mark W. Elliott, 11-52. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997.

———. A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.

Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2005.

Culver, Robert Duncan. Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical. Ross-shire, GB: Christian Focus, 2005.

Dumbrell, William. The Search for Order: Biblical Eschatology in Focus. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.

Lewis, C.S. Miracles: How God Intervenes in Nature and Human Affairs. New York: Macmillian, 1960.

Meyer, Jason C. The End of the Law: Mosaic Covenant in Pauline Theology. Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2009.

Pate, C. Marvin. The End of the Age Has Come: The Theology of Paul. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.

Wright, N.T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.

———. “Romans.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. 10. Nashville, TN: Abington Press, 2002.

———. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: HarperOne, 2008.