As "God is love," the children of God will love (1John 5:2). For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all (James 2:10). . Only God can clear the guilty. General Editor. According as He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love (Ephesians 1:4). Dr. William E. Biederwolf once said, Every creature born into this world has a nature after its kind. God gives away His justification freely; and if you bring anything to pay for it, He will throw it in your face and will not give His justification to you.. He had set Himself apart for the purpose for which the Father had set Him apart. In Adoption the regenerated son of God is placed in the position of perfect sonship. All Christian parents would bestow eternal life on their offspring if they could, but they cannot. It appears from Acts 8:18, 19 that Simon never did enter experientially into the truth of the Gospel. The Pharisees made open and loud professions before men, but their hearts were full of covetousness. Josephus (Ant., XI, iii, 9) speaks of the anaktesis kai paliggenesia tes patridos, "a new foundation and regeneration of the fatherland," after the return from the Babylonian captivity. In Matthew 19:28, Jesus refers to the regeneration (e.g. When one is born again he instinctively is drawn to those persons of like precious faith. The wind is an invisible and mysterious force; yet its effects are plainly evident. This verse is speaking of the Incarnation of God the eternal Son, His miraculous conception in the virgins womb. If we accept the erroneous idea that baptism is a means of regeneration, then it would follow that all baptized persons are regenerated. Man has nothing to do with it except to receive it through faith, and that as the Holy Spirit enables him. The coming kingdom of Christ on earth is the day of the earths regeneration, the times of restitution (restoration R.V.) But the Law condemned them because they could not keep it. There is a false exterior justification that has the approval and approbation of men, but is despised of God because the heart is not right. Although a clear distinction is not always maintained between regeneration and other experiences of the spiritual life, we may summarize our belief in the following theses: (1) Regeneration implies not merely an addition of certain gifts or graces, a strengthening of certain innate good qualities, but a radical change, which revolutionizes our whole being, contradicts and overcomes our old fallen nature, and places our spiritual center of gravity wholly outside of our own powers in the realm of God's causation. To change this lost condition, to impart this new life, Jesus claims as His God-appointed task: "The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10); "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly" (John 10:10). Positional Sanctification is the fact and act of belonging to God. What a theme! (7) Recent philosophy expressive of the reaction from the mechanical view of bare materialism, and also from the depreciation of personality as seen in socialism, has again brought into prominence the reality and need of personal life. To the Ephesians he writes: "And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins" (2:1), and later on: "God, being rich in mercy, . made us alive together with Christ" (2:4,5). He is now actually set apart as Gods possession and for Gods purpose. You cant train a bird to crawl, for the same reason you cant train a snake to fly. There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it (I Corinthians 10:13). Ten years later, the boy graduated from high school and at the commencement exercises he was awarded a scholarship in a university hundreds of miles from home. And now, on the background of these preliminary thoughts, let us pursue our study in the doctrine of Sanctification in its relation to the believer in Jesus Christ. Verse 13 says that the Holy Spirit is the agent in sanctification to that glorious end. The exhortation is not to try to die to self by some effort of our own, but to realize that when Christ died on the cross we did die to self with Him. This was always recognized as impossible to mere human endeavor. The Bible illustrates this: If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then shall they justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked (Deuteronomy 25:1). That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us (II Timothy 1:14). . . By nature, we are unable to do anything pleasing to God. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of our body (Romans 8:23). They refuse to believe that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6), and until we are born again, there is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:12). Water is but the tertium comparationis. In our day of scientific advance, miracles are to some an obstacle to faith. We have here a new creation as against the old creation. Man is unable to impart Divine life, therefore he has no part in the New Birth. Since we are exhorted to pursue it, then it must be the will of God for His children to do so. And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy unto the LORD, then the priest shall estimate it, whether it be good or bad: as the priest shall estimate it, so shall it stand (Leviticus 27:14). As to the nature of the change, it consists in the implanting of a new principle or disposition in the soul; the impartation of spiritual life to those who are by nature "dead in trespasses and sins.". Paul wrote this to those who were boasting that the Law was given to them. God set apart Jacob before he was born, in preference to his twin brother, Esau (Genesis 25:23, cf. He sees the believer just as if he had never sinned. The necessity of regeneration for all men grew out of the depravity of mans nature. If we had it now we would not be waiting for it. The glory of the revelation of the Lord from heaven will be shared by Christs Church at that day (Colossians 3:4). This life is imparted by Jesus Himself: "It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life" (John 6:63). The Apostle Peter wrote, Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied (I Peter 1:2). It happened in December 1927, and it has been blessedly real. The preparatory work has been going on for some time according to Divine plan, but now that work becomes effective in the life of the individual person. Because they were my children and I loved them, I excused and shielded their guilt. First Biblical Sense (Eschatological): In Matthew 19:28 the word refers to the restoration of the world, in which sense it is synonymical to the expressions apokatastasis panton, "restoration of all things" (Acts 3:21; the verb is found in Matthew 17:11, apokatastsei panta, "shall restore all things"), and anapsuxis, "refreshing" (Acts 3:19), which signifies a gradual transition of meaning to the second sense of the word under consideration. Perfect Sanctification is the final step in the sanctifying process. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? Whenever we come to a verse in the Bible, such as this one, about which there is disagreement and difference of interpretation, we must be patient and prayerful in our pursuit of other Bible passages which shed light on the subject under discussion. Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and the stars are not pure in his sight: how much less man, that is a worm! This righteousness is imputed to the believer by God on the faith principle apart from human works (Romans 4:5, 6). The mother said nothing but felt keenly disappointed with the pastors remarks. Little wonder that one theologian suggested that the holy and righteous God faced the greatest riddle ever when He set out to justify the ungodly. He left his young widow and eight-year-old son penniless. Fallen in Adam, all people are born dead in sins and trespasses and are incapable of spiritual renewal. It contains more than 2,500 Bible and Bible-related proper names and their meanings. There are occasions in the Scripture where the word water is used symbolically, and then the symbolism is not always the same. The holy man of God will honor God with his body. Whereupon the pastor advised her to go to the bank and withdraw the necessary money from the boys savings account. See ESCHATOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, IX. The theory known as Spontaneous Generation, that is, that life can spring into being of itself, is no longer believed by modern day scientists. . Whereunto He called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (II Thessalonians 2:14). It was written to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ (verse 1), and all such are assured that God is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy (verse 24). This life is eternal, imperishable: "I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:28). His conversion, commission and career as an apostle were foreseen and foreordained before he was born. For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are Gods (I Corinthians 6:19, 20). Its meaning is different in the two passages, though an easy transition of thought is evident. In a comprehensive statement of the Gospel, Paul wrote, Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification (Romans 4:25). Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect? Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24). If we looked to men for a definition of the words justification and righteousness, their meaning might change with time and differ according to geographical location. The Holy Spirit is a gift, not given discriminately to some believers, but rather to all believers, as the following passages teach: John 7:37-39; Romans 5:5; I Corinthians 2:12; II Corinthians 5:5. Remember, we could never open the way nor introduce ourselves to God. By union with Christ, believers experience the application of what Christ accomplished in His life, death, and resurrection. . (Romans 8:30). Had He not risen, man would be yet in his sins (I Corinthians 15:17), because Christ would not be what He claimed to be. The Cross And Christs Suffering For Sins (1 Peter 3:18-22), 6. In teaching this, they deny the Bibles teaching about the inability of man to believe in Christ by nature. In this latter sense the word is typically Christian, though the Old Testament contains many adumbrations of the spiritual process expressed thereby. And if you are wondering how the Word of God quickens faith, the answer is, By imparting knowledge. Reformation and revival occurs when the Spirit of God sovereignly moves to change the hearts of men, bringing them from spiritual death to spiritual life. Then that Christmas Day arrived when my heart eagerly responded to Gods Word and I was born again, Justified. The Biblical Doctrine of Regeneration. would prevent them from accepting it. Preparatory and Positional Sanctification are entirely the work of the Triune God, but in the matter of our Practical Sanctification there is that element of human responsibility. Mangey, ii.144) uses the word, speaking of the post-diluvial epoch of the earth, as of a new world, and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (xi.1), of a periodical restoration of all things, laying stress upon the constant recurrence and uniformity of all happenings, which thought the Preacher expressed by "There is no new thing under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The word again as used by our Lord in John 3:3, 7, where He spoke of being born again, is the translation of another, which means from above. Quench not the Spirit (I Thessalonians 5:15), and Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God (Ephesians 4:30), and your life will be blessed.

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