Chosen by God

Author:R. C. Sproul
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Religion
ISBN: 0842313354
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 1986-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

R E B I R T H A N D F A I T H

the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and -were by

nature children of wrath, just as the others.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great

love with which He loved us, even when we were dead

in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by

grace you have been saved), and raised us up together,

and made us sit together in the heavenly places in

Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show

the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness

toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and

that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of

works, lest any man should boast For we are Hit

workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,

which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in

them (Ephesians 2:1-10).

Here we find a predestinarian passage par excellence.

Notice that throughout this passage Paul places a heavy

accent on the riches of God's grace. We must never short-

change this grace. The passage celebrates the newness of

life that the Holy Spirit has created in us.

This work of the Spirit is sometimes called quickening.

Rarely heard in ordinary speech, the term is almost exclu-

sively used to describe an event that happens during a

pregnancy. "Quickening" refers to the woman's first feel-

ing of the life of the baby she is carrying in her womb.

What is here called quickening or being made alive is

what is elsewhere called rebirth or regeneration. The term

regeneration, as the word suggests, indicates a "generating again." To generate means to cause to happen or to begin.

We think of the first book of the Bible, the book of

beginnings, which is called Genesis. The prefix re. means

113

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.