Salvation and Regeneration (Titus 3:5)
Andy WoodsSoteriology 14, Ephesians 1:3
What is regeneration? Regeneration is the impartation of divine life. It’s the moment upon faith in Christ that spiritual life comes into a lost person. And that ministry of the Spirit of God is desperately needed because of our condition in the first Adam. because we are spiritually dead, in fact, Ephesians 2:1 basically says walking dead people when you translate that in the Greek. Because we are spiritually dead the greatest thing that we need is spiritual life and that’s something called regeneration. Jesus called it the new birth, that’s the whole point of His conversation with Nicodemus over in John 3, remember the whole Nick at night conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus? Remember what He said there? “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is” what? “born of the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
But Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Now a lot of people overdo spiritual death and I’ll talk about that in just a moment. Spiritual death does not mean inability to respond to God. Because we are spiritually dead, in fact, Ephesians 2:1 basically says walking dead people when you translate that in the Greek. Because we are spiritually dead the greatest thing that we need is spiritual life and that’s something called regeneration. Jesus called it the new birth, that’s the whole point of His conversation with Nicodemus over in John 3, remember the whole Nick at night conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus? Remember what He said there? “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is” what? “born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
The greatest need of all human beings today because in the first Adam we are spiritually dead, we do not have that life of God inside of us. So this is what’s called the new birth, and unless someone receives the new birth from God they’re not a Christian. It doesn’t matter how religious they are, it doesn’t matter where they go to church, it doesn’t matter what religious data is in their mind, it doesn’t matter what their parents did or didn’t do. All those things are irrelevant; if you’re not born of the Spirit you’re not a Christian, period.
The greatest need of all human beings today because in the first Adam we are spiritually dead, we do not have that life of God inside of us. So this is what’s called the new birth, and unless someone receives the new birth from God they’re not a Christian. It doesn’t matter how religious they are, it doesn’t matter where they go to church, it doesn’t matter what religious data is in their mind, it doesn’t matter what their parents did or didn’t do. All those things are irrelevant; if you’re not born of the Spirit you’re not a Christian, period.
Titus 3:5 says, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration” that’s the word I’m trying to unpack here, “regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.” So that word translated “regeneration” is the new birth; it’s the impartation of divine life and it’s palin genesia, which is a compound word; palin means again, and you recognize genesia? What book of the Bible do you think of there? Genesis, which is the book of beginnings. So palingenesia literally means to begin again. That’s the word translated regeneration.
What results is a regeneration or an impartation of divine life. And the reason I make an issue out of that, and I’ll develop this more a little bit later, but there’s a lot of people today arguing that you have to be regenerated first, before you can believe.
So we are not teaching here at all that regeneration is the cause of faith. Okay.
Regeneration is the result of faith and that is sort of a hard concept to get across. The Bible is very clear that regeneration, the impartation of divine life, cannot and will not happen in a person without exposing the lost sinner to the Word of God.
does regeneration precede faith? One of the things that is in ascendency today, particularly in the United States of America amongst Bible teachers is something called Reformed Theology. I would give it another term, a Hyper-Calvinist sort of approach. And essentially what they do is they camp very heavily on the word “dead.” Ephesians 2:1 says we’re dead in our trespasses and sins. [Ephesians 2:1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.”] And so basically what they teach from that, because of the emphasis they place on “dead” which they define as inability, you don’t even have the ability to believe in Christ is what they’ll say, because how can someone that’s dead believe. So what God has to do is He has to regenerate you first; see, they’ve got the order backwards.
We’re defining regeneration as a result of salvation, they’re making it the cause of salvation. So God must do this work in your heart, not of conviction but regeneration. And as you’re regenerated then you’ll have the capacity to believe. See? Now who gets regenerated then? It’s the elect get regenerated; if you’re fortunate enough to be one of the elect then God regenerates you so that you can believe. And this goes through the mnemonic device, TULIP, which is the device that’s used to sort of unpack Calvinism and Calvinism is basically a system of logic. John Calvin was an attorney who developed the early phases of this system and it’s beautifully logically structured IF you buy into step one. If you buy into step one then steps two, three, four, five come easy. The problem is, are they right with step one.
Regeneration is the result of faith and that is sort of a hard concept to get across. The Bible is very clear that regeneration, the impartation of divine life, cannot and will not happen in a person without exposing the lost sinner to the Word of God.
does regeneration precede faith? One of the things that is in ascendency today, particularly in the United States of America amongst Bible teachers is something called Reformed Theology. I would give it another term, a Hyper-Calvinist sort of approach. And essentially what they do is they camp very heavily on the word “dead.” Ephesians 2:1 says we’re dead in our trespasses and sins. [Ephesians 2:1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.”] And so basically what they teach from that, because of the emphasis they place on “dead” which they define as inability, you don’t even have the ability to believe in Christ is what they’ll say, because how can someone that’s dead believe. So what God has to do is He has to regenerate you first; see, they’ve got the order backwards.
We’re defining regeneration as a result of salvation, they’re making it the cause of salvation. So God must do this work in your heart, not of conviction but regeneration. And as you’re regenerated then you’ll have the capacity to believe. See? Now who gets regenerated then? It’s the elect get regenerated; if you’re fortunate enough to be one of the elect then God regenerates you so that you can believe. And this goes through the mnemonic device, TULIP, which is the device that’s used to sort of unpack Calvinism and Calvinism is basically a system of logic. John Calvin was an attorney who developed the early phases of this system and it’s beautifully logically structured IF you buy into step one. If you buy into step one then steps two, three, four, five come easy. The problem is, are they right with step one.
But basically what they teach is you’re dead, you don’t have any ability to believe in God so that’s the “T” in total depravity. So God must do a work of regeneration in you and once you come alive spiritually then you’ll have the ability to believe and that’s what they call irresistible faith, that’s the “I” in TULIP, you’re irresistibly drawn to Christ because you got regenerated before you even believed and the reason you got regenerated is because you’re one of the elect and the reason God only regenerates the elect is because the dead person can’t believe in Christ anyway. And since faith, or regeneration, is something God gave you, your faith can never fail. So if your faith ever starts to fail… you ever have any doubts in the Christian life? If your faith ever starts to fail then the question mark in the back of your mind is well, maybe I was never one of the what? One of the elect.
So you see how the whole thing follows logically? It makes perfect sense from a logical point of view. The issue though is not logic because logic is only as good as its starting point; if the starting point is fallacious then the rest of the steps really don’t matter. The issue isn’t is it logical, it’s very logical; the issue is, is it biblical? And I believe that that system is wrong because there is not a single verse in the Bible (and I’ll show you several that teach the exact opposite) that teach that regeneration precedes faith. What the Bible says over and over and over again, and that’s why I brought up the example of Matthew 19:28, and eschatology, the millennium, the regeneration of all things which follows the return of Christ. The Bible says over and over again is regeneration does not precede faith; but regeneration follows faith. That’s why we’re discussing regeneration under the heading “results of salvation.”
when you talk to the five point Calvinist, hyper-Calvinist, there’s always two things they talk about over and over again: the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man. And I’ve already shared with you their emphasis on the depravity of man, how it’s disproportionately over emphasized. Believe me, I believe that human beings are depraved, no problem there; I don’t define it the way they define it. They define it as people don’t even have an ability to respond to the gospel. There’s no biblical support for that. But what they talk about is the depravity of man and the sovereignty of God, and in their system God is in control of everything. God is even in control of whether you’re going to believe or not because you can’t have faith unless God gives it to you as a gift. And so at the end of the day they actually believe that they are protecting the sovereignty of God by not allowing man to play any role whatsoever in salvation. To my mind that is a denial of how God made us. God created us in whose image? His own, and part of being an image-bearer means a free will, volition. And because we are created in His image and because we have free will, when salvation occurs He, God, is not overriding somebody’s free will. They are making a response of volition and the only one God will accept is faith.
But you see, in the hyper-Calvinist system faith is something that God does. And at the end of the day they talk about how it has to be that way because we need to (A) protect God’s sovereignty, and (B) we need to respect the depravity of man. And I think their understanding of the depravity of man is disproportionate to what the Scripture says. There’s no need to protect God’s sovereignty because if God is sovereign He can protect His own sovereignty, can’t He? And it’s failing to understand that man is an image-bearer of God. That is how God made us.
Think about this for a second. It would have been really easy for God to just not put the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden at all. Why put the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden at all, just take out the tree of knowledge and humanity wouldn’t have sinned. Well, the problem is there has to be a tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden because there has to be an avenue of rebellion if man and woman, through volition choose that avenue of rebellion. And if that avenue for rebellion is not there, God is not respecting how He designed us as image-bearers. So one of the most frightening things that we possess as human beings is a free will. And what is the smartest thing you can do with your free will? Imitate Christ who said, “Not My will be done, but” what? “Thy will be done.” The smartest thing you can do with your free will is give it right back to God, in every issue of life. But God is not going to snatch it from you or take it from you, or coerce Himself upon you because if He did that he wouldn’t be respecting how He has manufactured us in His image.
John 20:30-31, it says, “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe” isn’t believing something that we do? “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have” what? “life in His name.” So do you once again see how life, regeneration, is the result of salvation and not the cause of salvation.
Now what does the Spirit of God do in the unsaved person? The Spirit of God is very active regarding the unsaved person. I don’t mean to give you the impression that the Spirit of God has no influence over us at all in terms of our decision to believe because I don’t think a person can actually believe until they come under the Spirit’s convicting ministry. And the Spirit of God will seek to persuade us to believe through conviction, but He won’t believe for you. And that’s the whole point that Jesus was making in the Upper Room, in John 16:7-11, when He was saying it’s to your advantage that I go, because when I go the Comforter will come, the helper, the paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the one that comes alongside and assists.
And in the process Jesus starts talking about what the Spirit of God does in the world. This is not a ministry here that we’re reading that He performs in the life of the believer, obviously the Holy Spirit does many things in the life of the believer. That’s not what Jesus is talking about here. He’s talking about the ministry that the Spirit of God does in the world. And notice what it says, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Now that was Christ’s first order of business when He ascended to the right hand of the Father, Acts 1, and began His present session at the Father’s right hand as a priest after the order of who? Melchizedek. And the first thing Jesus did when He entered that position is He sent the Holy Spirit and that’s what’s going on in Acts chapter 2.
So you see how the whole thing follows logically? It makes perfect sense from a logical point of view. The issue though is not logic because logic is only as good as its starting point; if the starting point is fallacious then the rest of the steps really don’t matter. The issue isn’t is it logical, it’s very logical; the issue is, is it biblical? And I believe that that system is wrong because there is not a single verse in the Bible (and I’ll show you several that teach the exact opposite) that teach that regeneration precedes faith. What the Bible says over and over and over again, and that’s why I brought up the example of Matthew 19:28, and eschatology, the millennium, the regeneration of all things which follows the return of Christ. The Bible says over and over again is regeneration does not precede faith; but regeneration follows faith. That’s why we’re discussing regeneration under the heading “results of salvation.”
when you talk to the five point Calvinist, hyper-Calvinist, there’s always two things they talk about over and over again: the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man. And I’ve already shared with you their emphasis on the depravity of man, how it’s disproportionately over emphasized. Believe me, I believe that human beings are depraved, no problem there; I don’t define it the way they define it. They define it as people don’t even have an ability to respond to the gospel. There’s no biblical support for that. But what they talk about is the depravity of man and the sovereignty of God, and in their system God is in control of everything. God is even in control of whether you’re going to believe or not because you can’t have faith unless God gives it to you as a gift. And so at the end of the day they actually believe that they are protecting the sovereignty of God by not allowing man to play any role whatsoever in salvation. To my mind that is a denial of how God made us. God created us in whose image? His own, and part of being an image-bearer means a free will, volition. And because we are created in His image and because we have free will, when salvation occurs He, God, is not overriding somebody’s free will. They are making a response of volition and the only one God will accept is faith.
But you see, in the hyper-Calvinist system faith is something that God does. And at the end of the day they talk about how it has to be that way because we need to (A) protect God’s sovereignty, and (B) we need to respect the depravity of man. And I think their understanding of the depravity of man is disproportionate to what the Scripture says. There’s no need to protect God’s sovereignty because if God is sovereign He can protect His own sovereignty, can’t He? And it’s failing to understand that man is an image-bearer of God. That is how God made us.
Think about this for a second. It would have been really easy for God to just not put the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden at all. Why put the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden at all, just take out the tree of knowledge and humanity wouldn’t have sinned. Well, the problem is there has to be a tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden because there has to be an avenue of rebellion if man and woman, through volition choose that avenue of rebellion. And if that avenue for rebellion is not there, God is not respecting how He designed us as image-bearers. So one of the most frightening things that we possess as human beings is a free will. And what is the smartest thing you can do with your free will? Imitate Christ who said, “Not My will be done, but” what? “Thy will be done.” The smartest thing you can do with your free will is give it right back to God, in every issue of life. But God is not going to snatch it from you or take it from you, or coerce Himself upon you because if He did that he wouldn’t be respecting how He has manufactured us in His image.
John 20:30-31, it says, “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe” isn’t believing something that we do? “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have” what? “life in His name.” So do you once again see how life, regeneration, is the result of salvation and not the cause of salvation.
Now what does the Spirit of God do in the unsaved person? The Spirit of God is very active regarding the unsaved person. I don’t mean to give you the impression that the Spirit of God has no influence over us at all in terms of our decision to believe because I don’t think a person can actually believe until they come under the Spirit’s convicting ministry. And the Spirit of God will seek to persuade us to believe through conviction, but He won’t believe for you. And that’s the whole point that Jesus was making in the Upper Room, in John 16:7-11, when He was saying it’s to your advantage that I go, because when I go the Comforter will come, the helper, the paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the one that comes alongside and assists.
And in the process Jesus starts talking about what the Spirit of God does in the world. This is not a ministry here that we’re reading that He performs in the life of the believer, obviously the Holy Spirit does many things in the life of the believer. That’s not what Jesus is talking about here. He’s talking about the ministry that the Spirit of God does in the world. And notice what it says, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Now that was Christ’s first order of business when He ascended to the right hand of the Father, Acts 1, and began His present session at the Father’s right hand as a priest after the order of who? Melchizedek. And the first thing Jesus did when He entered that position is He sent the Holy Spirit and that’s what’s going on in Acts chapter 2.
(I)n hyper-Calvinism the whole name of the game is faith is a gift. Why is faith a gift? Because you are depraved where you don’t even have an ability to respond to God. So God has to regenerate you as the cause of faith, regeneration is not the result of faith in their system, it’s a result of faith in the way we teach it based on the Bible, but in their logical system faith is a result of regeneration. So faith itself becomes a gift, and you hear this a lot in their circles; they’ll say faith is a gift and they will quote Ephesians 2:8-9 which at first glance looks like it’s teaching faith is a gift, you all know these verses, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; [9] not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” And they’ll say there it is, right there in the Bible, faith is a gift.
The problem is in Greek, the New Testament was not written in English, it was written in Greek, genders, nouns have genders, masculine, feminine, neuter. Genders are very important. The genders must agree with each other. If the gift that he talks about here is faith then there must be a gender agreement in “gift” and “faith” for that mindset to work. And the problem is, when you study this in Greek those are two different genders. Faith is a feminine noun, gift is a neuter noun; gift is neuter, faith is feminine so therefore the nearest antecedent of gift cannot be faith.
Well then, what’s the gift? When you study it out in the Bible what you’ll see over and over again is the gift is salvation, the gift is the, not the cause of faith but the what? The result of faith. So the gift is all the benefits that come to us through this marvelous package of salvation. Faith is not the gift, salvation is the gift. And I just share that with you because when you’re in a very strong Calvinistic environment they’ll quote this verse constantly and if you’re not familiar with the nuances in the Greek language it will seem as if faith is a gift.
So again, it’s this system, we’re depraved, logically, we don’t have an ability to respond so God regenerates us so we can believe; so faith itself is a gift. Coming to Christ is virtually irresistible and I would say the starting point of the whole thing is wrong. Yes, we’re depraved but we have an ability to respond to the gospel by way of faith when we come under conviction. And therefore the regeneration that we receive did not come before we believed; it came after, as a result.
And when you get into these circles of very Hyper-Calvinism what they’ll tell you is church history is on our side and I’ve been in countless arguments with people on this and they’ll go into the stages of the faith, from Luther and Calvin and they’ll say who are you to disagree with these giants. But the problem is, when you really start analyzing the history what you’ll discover is history is not on their side as frequently as they make it sound.
For example, notice what one of the greatest preachers the Christian world ever had, Charles Haddon Spurgeon said in a sermon, he says: “If I am to preach the faith in Christ to a man who is regenerated, then the man, being regenerated, is saved already, and it is an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for me to preach Christ to him, and bid him to believe in order to be saved when he is saved already, being regenerate. Am I only to preach faith to those who have it? Absurd, indeed! Is not this waiting till the man is cured and then bringing him the medicine? This is preaching Christ to the righteous and not to sinners.” [Spurgeon – Sermon entitled The Warrant of Faith].
So here you find Spurgeon who just cart blanche rejected this idea that regeneration precedes faith. And you say well, you know Andy, why make an issue out of this? Because it affects how you present the gospel. If you believe that a person must be regenerated so that they can believe you will not preach the gospel to them, what you’ll tell them to do is pray for the gift of faith.
Now here is a quote from John MacArthur, it’s in one of his sermons. And when you get into the John MacArthur, and I agree with a lot of the things John MacArthur has said and teaches, I don’t carte blanch reject everything the man has done. I have a very strong disagreement with him though, on these soteriological salvation issues. And when you get into their circles and you start to rub shoulders with these types of people, you have to toe the line on all these points. And if you will not toe the line you are almost persona non grata. And what I’m trying to say is this is significant because it affects how you present the gospel. So here’s a few words; it says, and the MacArthur quote starts about halfway through.
It says: “If faith is a gift of God, THEN HOW DO I GET IT? Do I do nothing and hope that God will sovereignly bestow it upon me? Or, do I cry out to God and pray that He will give me the gift of saving faith? Dr. MacArthur apparently holds to this second option. At the end of one of his messages he gave a salvation appeal and said the following:” Now here’s the quote from the sermon, at the end of his message there was a gospel presentation, kind of like how we give our gospel presentations at the end, they do the same thing at his church, and he says: “Faith is a gift from God…it is permanent…the faith that God gives begets obedience…” you see, and this is where the whole doctrine of Lordship salvation comes from.
If faith is really a gift of God, then there has to be a lot of fruit in a person’s life if it’s from God, right? Or else maybe they never had saving faith and they never had saving faith maybe they were never regenerated so they could believe and if they were never regenerated so they could believe maybe they were never one of the elect. And it leads to, and I’ve been in enough of environments where they teach this, it leads to a very hyper-critical spirit towards your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. If someone doesn’t show up for Wednesday night Bible study, oh-oh, maybe they’ve never received the gift of faith. If they’ve never received the gift of faith… because they’re faltering, if God’s faith was really in them and He gave it to them there shouldn’t be any faltering, there shouldn’t be any sin, there shouldn’t be any ups and downs. If there’s any laxation or movement back into sin in any sense there are very severe statements that people make about other people about whether they’re saved or not. And that’s one of the downsides of being in these circles.
I can’t remember where I was in this quote, but “Faith is a gift from God…it is permanent…the faith that God gives begets obedience…” so if you start to have any doubts maybe you don’t have the faith from God. What does the book of James tell us? The book of James tells us that when we pray we should believe and not have what? Doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave tossed and blown by the wind. [James 1:6, “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.”] Doesn’t that text indicate that a believer can have doubts? Have you ever had doubts as a Christian? I’ve had doubts as a Christian many times. The problem is when you go through these valleys and you have doubts, if you believe faith is a gift you’re going to start thinking well maybe I don’t have the right faith, that God gives, because if I had the faith that God gives and God can’t fail then I shouldn’t be having doubts.
And a lot of emotional, psychological type problems that people have in Christianity is related to these kinds of doctrines that I’m trying to expose. I’m not trying to give you a lecture on theology; I’m trying to show you these things because ideas have consequences. The way you believe about a lot of these things will impact your emotional makeup as you go through the Christian life. Back to the quote: “Faith is a gift from God…it is permanent…the faith that God gives begets obedience. God gave it to you and He sustains it…May God grant you a true saving faith, a permanent gift that begins in humility and brokenness over sin and ends up in obedience unto righteousness. That’s true faith and it’s a gift that only God can give,” and now here’s the presentation of the gospel: you ready? I have it underlined, “and if you desire it pray and ask that He would grant it to you.”
[Tape GC 90-21 on Lordship salvation, last part of tape, comments made during the closing invitation.]
So what is the gospel that he just preached? The gospel he just preached is not here’s Jesus, here’s His death, here’s His resurrection, here’s what He did for you, now you respond to that by faith. That’s not what he’s preaching here; he’s telling people to pray for the gift of faith. You go through the book of Acts where they evangelized all over the place and you show me a single time where Paul or anybody else told the lost sinner they need to pray for the gift of faith. What they did over and over again is they presented Christianity, they presented the cross, the resurrection and the good news, and they told people to receive it as a free gift by faith, trusting that the Spirit of God was convicting those people of their need to respond to the message. That’s the gospel he uses.
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