What is the Doctrine of Regeneration?
The Doctrines of Grace: How God Saves Sinners—Start to Finish (#4)
Ephesians 1:3–7; John 3:3–8; James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:3; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:1–7; Canons of Dort III/IV.11–12
If our doctrine doesn’t lead to doxology, it isn’t biblical doctrine.
In this fourth sermon on the doctrines of grace, Dr. Daniel Hyde calls us to praise God for his lavish grace in regeneration—the Holy Spirit’s work of making dead sinners alive. Scripture describes this grace as a heavenly birth that comes down from above, an entirely supernatural work; as a new creation, no less powerful than God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, opening closed hearts and softening hardened ones; and as a miraculous resurrection, in which God makes those who were dead in trespasses alive together with Christ. Do Calvinists believe God still does miracles? Absolutely—every time a sinner is born again. And knowing that God has made us alive, we pray for his quickening power to extend through us to others.
Introduction
Tonight, let's turn in our Bibles to Ephesians 1—a familiar passage beginning at verse three. Paul praises the works the Triune God has done to save us:
Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Then it goes on to describe one of those is election, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. That's the goal of our being chosen. In love he predestined us, the goal is for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved, that is Jesus. And it's in him, for verse seven we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us.
So far the reading of God’s wonderful words.
Here is praise to God for every spiritual blessing he’s given to us. To pick out a couple of them, the apostle praises God for his choosing us in his grace, giving us Jesus to die for us, and to redeem us from our sins by his blood. It's all to the praise of his glorious grace, which he’s poured out upon us so abundantly.
Paul wants us to know from this passage that we are to praise God for his lavish grace. If we talk about the doctrines of grace, but they don’t lead us to praise the God of grace, then perhaps we haven't understood what God’s grace is. Perhaps we haven’t ourselves experienced what it is to be a recipient of the grace of God, to be adopted as a child of God, to have all of our sins forgiven, all of our trespasses wiped away, all the debts that we owe wiped done away with.
If our doctrine doesn't lead us to doxology, then it’s not really biblical theology!
Our theology in our heads must trickle down to our hearts and affect us so that we praise him, that we live for him, and seek to share who he is and what he’s done to everyone around us.
I want us to thank him tonight for the doctrine of grace called “regeneration.” God has not only chosen us, Christ has not only died for us who are dead in sin, but he’s also given us the Spirit to make those who are dead alive. That’s regeneration. It’s giving new life. To use Jesus’s term, it’s to be born again.
So, let’s praise God tonight for the lavish grace of the Holy Spirit in regenerating us, in giving us new life, new birth.
Regeneration as a Heavenly Birth
Regeneration is described in various passages as a heavenly birth. We praise God tonight for giving us a new birth that comes down out of heaven!
John 3
In John 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. He’s afraid of his friends and colleagues. In our terms, he’s afraid of his family, co-workers, and those on the city council he serves alongside. He can’t really say that he trusts in Jesus during the daytime. People can’t see him walking to Jesus into a house; so he waits for night where he can cloak himself and ask questions about who Jesus is.
Jesus recognizes this and tells him “unless you’re born again you cannot enter the kingdom of God.” That language of being “born again” is what’s called a double entendre. It means two things: to be born again is to be born from above.
Nicodemus understands it in that crass first way, to be born again. That’s why he asks, “how can I go back to my mom’s womb and come out again a second time? I’m an adult. That's ridiculous. That goes against all reason, logic, and experience.”
Jesus says, “unless you’re born of water and the Spirit.” He’s quoting from Old Testament prophets of the new life that Israel had to have. He goes on to say “that which is born of flesh is flesh.” If you’re just born in a natural way, you’re going to have a natural life. “But that which is born of the Spirit.” That's why we know Jesus is speaking of heavenly birth. He means born of the Holy Spirit.
We praise God that he’s given us new birth that comes from him. It doesn’t come from our moms, our dads, our family tree, the last name that we have, or all the things we’ve inherited. It comes from God.
James 1
In James 1 :18 we read, “of his [God’s] of his own will he’s brought us forth.” This is the very same language of regeneration or being born again. It’s of his will, meaning, God's. It links back to what John taught: we must be born again “not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man”—not of anything of human origin. We must be born from God with a spiritual new birth, a heavenly new birth.
1 Peter 1
Then in 1 Peter 1:3 we heard the familiar phrase: “Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has caused us to be born again.”
Canons of Dort 3/4.12
Right in the middle of a lengthy paragraph, we read, “rather it is an entirely supernatural work.” It’s describing regeneration. “It’s an entirely supernatural birth.” That’s because it’s a heavenly birth. It comes from heaven. It comes from God.
We can’t make ourselves regenerated. We can’t give ourselves new birth. We can’t give our children a born again experience in baptism. We can’t create it by the amount of prayers or the intensity of our prayers or the amount of tears alongside of our prayers. It has to come from God. We have to be born from above, from God’s will, because he’s caused it.
Now, people might ask, “Do Reformed people still believe that God does miracles?” How would you answer? The greatest miracle God still performs is new birth! Amen? Every time a sinner is born again, repents, believes, and is baptized demonstrates that God is the one who’s given them new life.
Those of us who’ve come to know new life later in life can say “Amen!” It’s no less a miracle in our kids. They’re baptized, we teach them, pray with them, try to live a godly life around them, and pray that they will be able to say, “I’ve never known a day where I didn’t trust in Jesus.” That comes from God!
So, yes, we believe in miracles. Yes, we believe God still does the miraculous. Yes, we believe God does supernatural stuff because every time a sinner is born again we see that!
One hymn says it like this, “Spirit of life like grace, imparts and breathe on sinners slain.” We pray the Spirit of God would breathe upon us and impart his grace on us. We must be born again.
We praise God as Paul does here that God has lavished upon us his grace, especially his grace of being born again.
Regeneration as a New Creation
We also praise God for giving us new creation. Regeneration is new birth and new creation.
James 1
James 1 :18 again tells us that it’s “of God's own will that he's brought us forth,” and then he says that we are “a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” That’s harvest language? You know when KJ and I lived in Iowa for a summer internship, I had only seen corn at the grocery store! Bright, shiny yellow, all the little fibers gone. Maybe I saw a husk as a kid, as you have to husk corn once or twice in your life with mom and dad. But we see corn in cans, right? You never really see how it’s made, here in SoCal. Where does it come from? It takes a farmer, dropping a little seed into the dirt, covering it, watering it, praying for sun and rain. And repeat every day! Now they have big combines machine that do it all for them, but still it has to come from work.
James describes here that we are like a first fruits. We’re the first part of the corn that’s harvested. We’re a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures. This is more than first fruits of a big harvest. He’s describing new creation. God has many creatures that he’s made and that are born; but some are born again like new creatures, new creations: “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed and the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
Canons of Dort 3/4.12
In our Canons of Dort, there’s this great line where it talks about regeneration with these kind of passages in mind and says “regeneration is not lesser than or inferior to the power of creation.” The work of God to give us new life as a new creation is not less than or inferior to his power when he created the world, the heavens and the earth!
Does God do miracles? Absolutely! The miracle of giving new creation life by the same power of God that made everything in the beginning in a cosmic way, but now in one person’s life—that’s miraculous.
Canons of Dort 3/4.11
This new creation is so powerful, so effective, so magnificent, so miraculous, because God does this. The Canons describe us as sinners and then the power of the Holy Spirit regenerates us. Here’s why the Spirit’s new creation is like creation power—“he opens the closed heart.” Have you ever tried to get a person to open up by yourself but their heart is closed to the gospel? God can! He opens closed hearts.
“He softens the hard hearts…he circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised.” Those of us with unbelieving loved ones who’ve tried to do this, know. We’ve prayed, we’ve shared nicely. Sometimes you know with our own family we can get a little agitated about these things and you come to realize, “I’m not the Holy Spirit.”
“I know what I’ll do. I’ll call the pastor. He’ll have all the answers. I’ll call the seminary students. I’ll call an elder.” None of us are the Holy Spirit either. This power is so powerful, so miraculous, so much like the first creation that the article goes on to say that God “makes the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant.”
We’re like dead trees, Jesus said. But God transplants us and causes dead fruit and dead branches to come alive so we begin to produce good fruit.
The second stanza of “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” is a prayer:
“Breathe, oh breathe thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast.
Let us all in thee inherit, let us find the promised rest.
Take away the love of sinning, Alpha and Omega be.
End of faith as its beginning, set our hearts at liberty.”
And there’s this final stanza which relates to our theme here of a new creation:
“Finish then thy new creation, pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee.
Changed from glory into glory till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.”
Praise God that he gives new creation life to us in Jesus Christ!
Regeneration as a Miraculous Resurrection
This regeneration is a miraculous resurrection.
“Do Calvinists believe the Holy Spirit is living and acting, and still does miraculous things?”
Absolutely, because he makes dead sinners alive! It’s a miraculous resurrection for a lifeless sinner to trust in Jesus.
After saying we were once dead, we once lived according to the course of our minds in the world and the devil himself, and we were children of wrath, Paul says, “But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us” (Eph. 2:4). Notice all the actions on God’s part. We were dead but God was the one who loved us and showed mercy upon us. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive. That’s resurrection.
Paul can’t help but say in the middle of his sentence, “by grace you’ve been saved!” He continues to say God has made us alive with Christ, raised us up with him in resurrection, and seated us in heavenly places.
God makes alive. God gives new birth. God makes new creations. God resurrects the dead still today! How? By the power of the Holy Spirit.
“Eternal Spirit, by whose breath
the soul is raised from sin and death.
Before thy throne we sinners bend
to us thy quickening power extend.”
Conclusion
So, if we know we’ve been miraculously given new birth, miraculously become new creations, and been miraculously resurrected, then we should praise God from whom all blessings flow for this blessing of regeneration. “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”
And we should pray to this same God who made us love to make others alive. May his power extend not just to us but through us to others who are still unwilling, whose eyes are still closed and blind, whose hearts are still hard and closed, uncompliant, unwilling, evil, dead, lifeless, and fruitless.